


Full Of Grace

by bomberqueen17



Series: Now And At The Hour Of Our Death [4]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BAMF Natasha Romanov, Blood Family, Conspiracy Theories, Elvis - Freeform, F/M, Found Family, Identity Issues, Memory Alteration, Mental Health Issues, Natasha Feels, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Natasha-centric, Post-Recovery Bucky Barnes, Sam wilson is a superhero, Suicidal Ideation, Trauma Recovery, bucky barnes: youtube sensation, bucky's family - Freeform, disabled veterans, discussions of personhood, in which there is a network of young female nonwhite hackers, internet fame, issues of memory and identity, painted toenails, pillow fort, proper weapons maintenance, suicide awareness, you can't tell me a US Army NCOIC wouldn't be pretty anal about cleaning guns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 23:10:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 92,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4583718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So you tell me how this goes,” James said. “I come in and say I’m done running. Two, three days of interrogation, at a conservative estimate; maybe if I’m lucky they just talk. Since I’m in such excellent condition overall, this does only positive things to my robust mental situation and I at no time display any worrying responses or signs of post-traumatic stress, thereby earning myself complete exoneration and a pat on the head. That how you figure it’ll go down?” </p><p>He reassembled the first Glock and cast a glance up at her. “Or you figure, a couple days of sleep deprivation and some nasty questions and I’ll snap and they ship me off to that facility they got that they don’t talk about, and what few files there are on me mysteriously disappear. Because that’s the only option I see.”</p><p>“That’s not what they did to me,” she said. “And you know they had just as much reason to want—“</p><p>He yanked on the second Glock with an angry motion. “Barton was the reason they didn’t put you down like a dog,” he said, “and the only reason that stuck was that Fury wanted it to. I put three slugs in Fury’s chest personally, you think he’s gonna offer me the same consideration?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Intercession

**Author's Note:**

> This is the opening salvo, proper, of a pretty involved story. It's going to be primarily from Natasha's POV and deal with issues of identity, memory, and yes, fertility (I had already been working on this before AOU, goddammit, and my take is way more nuanced, which isn't saying much). I have for a long time wanted very badly to write a story exploring Natasha more deeply.  
> I have a fair bit done. It's interspersed-- Natasha's POV, and Lakeisha / the conspiracy theorists, and Steve and his team.

James was in the shower when Natasha got home. She pulled the clips out of her weapons and dumped them all onto the coffee table for cleaning, threw her duffel on the floor by the closet with the laundry machines, retrieved one of the quart containers of ice cream from the freezer, and let herself collapse onto the recliner with the spoon in one hand and her phone in the other to check up on all her tracked hashtags. 

James came out after a few minutes, a towel around his waist, another around his shoulders, pulled up over his head so he could towel roughly at his hair. “Hey,” he said, “how’d it go?”

“You know fine well how it went,” she said a little peevishly. 

He gave her an almost-convincing innocent look. “They didn’t show much on the news.”

“I was subjected to one of the most relentless interrogations in my recent memory on the subject of the mysterious sniper who was somehow felling opponents,” she said. “Tony Stark tried blustering it out, Fury tried guessing it out, and then Steve tried guilting it out of me. They’re onto you, and they’re sure I know where you are. You are neither subtle nor clever, James.”

“I do what I gotta do,” he said, abandoning the pretense and dropping down onto the sofa. 

“You don’t gotta,” she said. 

He sighed, and pulled the gun cleaning kit out from under the coffee table. After a moment, he pulled his sniper rifle out from under the couch, which was as clear an admission as anything. He disassembled her Glocks first, though, and set to methodically cleaning them. 

“I can’t not help,” he said. 

“And they would let you help,” she said, “if you would come in and speak to them instead of remaining a fugitive. Much more of this, and they will start having me tailed, and even I cannot shake off every single tail every time.”

James’s face was grim and cold, and completely focused on his task as he shoved the cleaning rod through the pistol barrel until the last swab came out clean. “So you tell me how this goes,” he said. “I come in and say I’m done running. They strip me down, scan me, and lock me in a little room for debriefing. Two, three days of interrogation, at a conservative estimate; maybe if I’m lucky they just talk, but if I’m not they use chemicals and, you know, enhanced tactics, to make sure they’re getting everything out of me. Since I’m in such excellent condition overall, this does only positive things to my robust mental situation and I at no time display any worrying responses or signs of post-traumatic stress, thereby earning myself complete exoneration and a pat on the head. That how you figure it’ll go down?” 

He reassembled the first Glock and cast a glance up at her. “Or you figure, a couple days of sleep deprivation and some nasty questions and I’ll snap and they ship me off to that facility they got that they don’t talk about, and what few files there are on me mysteriously disappear. Because that’s the only option I see.”

“That’s not what they did to me,” she said. “And you know they had just as much reason to want—“

He yanked on the second Glock with an angry motion. “Barton was the reason they didn’t put you down like a dog,” he said, “and the only reason that stuck was that Fury wanted it to. I put three slugs in Fury’s chest personally, you think he’s gonna offer me the same consideration?”

“You are James Buchanan Barnes,” Natasha shot back, “and Steve Rogers will not let them disappear you.”

“Oh yeah?” James anointed a swab with oil and fitted it to the cleaning rod. “You think Steve Rogers’ll feel the same way when he figures out how little is left of his precious Bucky?”

“You underestimate Steve Rogers,” Natasha said. 

James made a frustrated noise, and swabbed the barrel again with the first swab inside-out. It came out black, and he discarded it and started again with a clean one. “No,” he said, “I wouldn’t make that mistake. You’re right, but I’m not about to pit Steve Rogers against Nick Fury and Tony Stark. So they try to disappear me, Steve won’t let it happen, Tony is the picture of tact and restraint and starts a fight, Steve is a goddamn maniac and punches things, Fury is so busy pretending he’s dead that he can’t put the fire out, and the fucking world ends because Steve Rogers’s common sense has a big old Bucky-shaped hole in it, and I wind up giving HYDRA exactly the ending they wanted, which is everything being fucking wrecked forever.”

There were four dirty swabs now, but the fifth came out clean. “Christ,” James interrupted himself to mutter, “were you using black powder or what?”

“I have more sway than you are giving me credit for,” Natasha said. 

“You need to go to bat for me like you need another hole in your head,” James said. He wiped down the moving parts and reassembled the second Glock easily, then started screwing together the longer cleaning rod for his rifle. 

Normally Natasha wouldn’t let anyone touch her guns, but for some reason it hadn’t occurred to her not to let James clean them. It struck a strange echo in her; she’d expected him to, like it was normal. But she was absolutely sure it wasn’t something she’d ever let anyone do before.

“At least you’ve got to talk to Steve,” she said, abandoning the argument. “He’s taking it personally that you haven’t contacted him.”

Midway through pushing the cleaning rod into the disassembled rifle’s barrel, James froze, bare shoulders going high and tight. “It’s not—“ he said, “I can’t— _Natasha_.”

“You don’t need to explain it to me,” she said. She looked down at her phone, pulled up James’s number, and texted Steve’s number to him. “There. Explain it to him.”

James watched her cautiously, eyebrows drawing together, but she could tell he understood what she was doing. “I don’t know what to say to him,” he said quietly, and pushed the first swab through, and it came out black, meaning the rifle had been fired, and more than once from the look of it. 

“That’s not something I can answer for you,” she said. She stood up. “I am going to go to bed. Thank you for cleaning my guns. But don’t play innocent with me. You were there, you followed me, and the Avengers know it.”

 

When he came to her he smelled of gun oil. “Natasha,” he whispered. 

She rolled over. “James,” she said drowsily. She was sore and sleepy and heavy-limbed, but she wanted him. 

He climbed into the bed, and he was stripped down to only underwear, and he was already hard, and she wanted him. “Natasha,” he murmured, and she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close and found his mouth with hers blindly, rubbing her face across his, tasting his skin and feeling his stubble and breathing his breath. His back was broad and familiar, a thigh hard and smooth with muscle slotting in between hers. 

“Hnn,” she said, nuzzling in to find his mouth again. He tasted of toothpaste, of soap, smelled of shampoo, and his skin was soft where it wasn’t scarred, soft and cool to the touch under her warm hands, against her warm body. 

“You’re all I have, Natasha,” James murmured between breaths and kisses, running his hands, one cold flesh and one cold metal, over her body, her shoulder, her neck, her sides, up under her shirt, cupping her breast, drawing a tautness into the formless pool of desire warming her belly. It came tight like a string, like a knot drawing into being from a loose tangle, a direct line from his fingers’ soft cool pressure on the sensitive weight of her breast down through her gut to the insistent growing heat of the erectile tissue in her pelvic wall. She had never been as instinctively aware of the physical mechanics of her own desire as she was with him, but there it was— his thigh pressing against her made her arch her back and tighten her pelvic muscles, made her bear down and shiver at the pleasure of the increasing pressure as her blood moved faster, as her sex organs all swelled and flowered and lubricated themselves, activated by the weight and scent and presence and motion of him. 

“James,” she said again, and her conscious mind really wasn’t catching up at all, she was still mostly asleep except for the parts of her that, God, just wanted to _fuck_.  

“You’re all I have,” James said, “you’re all I can let myself want, you’re all I know how to deal with, I can’t— I can’t stay away, I can’t not follow. They’ll separate us, again, don’t you understand that? And I couldn’t bear that, you’re the only thing that reminds me how to be human at all.”

He was achingly sincere, almost frantic with it, and oh, he had his thigh right up against her and she moaned and rubbed against him, feeling the hard length of his erection riding against the crease of her hip, and she wanted that, she was starving for that, she wanted that inside her. She moaned a little sharper and hitched her hips against him. “Mm,” she said, “oh, love, please.”

“I can’t face them,” he said, breathless, “I can’t— I can’t, and especially not Steve, I can’t—“

“Oh,” she said, and she needed more, more precise pressure, his fingers— or deeper pressure, okay, yes, that would do it— his cock was right there, and it was so hard, and she could feel it, and it felt so big, and it would be just the thing inside her, it would light her up and set her off and she wanted him, yes, flat on her back to take him all the way in, oh, perfect— “James, fuck” was as much of that as she could articulate, and she hooked her fingers in the waistband of his underwear. 

“All right, all right,” he murmured, pausing to kiss her, then pushing her shirt up to her neck and lowering his face to her breasts. 

“Mmn,” she said, “fuck, I— fuck me,” and she rolled her hips up against him, shoving her thighs wider apart. 

He laughed, soft and husky, and she could feel the vibrations from his voice all through the framework of his skeleton. His mouth was wet and ticklishly alive against her skin, and she twined her fingers in his hair and tugged. “If only I could guess what you wanted,” he laughed. 

“Don’t be clever,” she murmured, “come on and— oh—“

“You don’t want my mouth?” he asked, nipping teasingly at her collarbone. “You don’t want my hand?”

“I want your _cock_ ,” she said, digging her nails into the back of his neck.

 He sighed, letting out his breath in a long satisfied growl, and wriggled out of his underwear. She writhed beneath him, divesting herself of the shorts she had been sleeping in, and he pinned her playfully, nipping at her neck and making her shiver with his hot breath. 

She’d had plenty of lovers, many of whom she’d slept with for fun; she’d never really had a physical type, but had experimented pretty widely in her attempts to determine what she liked. She’d tried big men, small men, women of varying shapes and sizes, and had found that generally their sense of humor was the most important component. The maleness of a man, the femaleness of a woman, were never things that had intrinsically appealed. But God, James was _so_ male, his shoulders so broad and his cheeks stubbly and his cock big and thick and hot, and she groaned impatiently and wrapped her legs around him. 

“Like this, huh?” he said, looking down at her. 

“Yes,” she said, “ _please_.”

“You’re all worked-up,” he mused, reaching down with his right hand. He slid two fingers into her easily and made an appreciative noise. “Guess you weren’t kidding.”

“I want you,” she said unsteadily, heart pounding. 

“Yeah okay,” he said, fumbling into position. He pushed into her slowly and she didn’t hold back her guttural moan of satisfaction. “Holy fuckin’ shit,” he gasped, and she shoved her hips up to meet his.

“Yes,” she said, “fuck, yes—“ He was perfect, it was exactly what she needed, it was exactly the pressure and weight and friction she wanted and she was already so close, her whole body tingling. “Oh, James, yes, that’s— that’s it— like that—”

He slid his hand under her back, between her shoulder blades, and up to cradle the back of her neck in his fingers, holding her in place as he set to fucking her slow and deep. She shuddered and jerked against him, angling her hips to put him where she wanted him. “Natasha,” he murmured, kissing her neck, kissing her jaw, setting a steady pace. 

She clamped down around him, bearing down with all her internal muscles and arching her back to get just a little bit more pressure, and her breath hitched a moment as everything suspended itself except the motion of his body into hers. 

She gave a shuddering cry and shook and shook as she came, only dimly aware of James’s voice exclaiming, low and fervent. Her whole body was lit up, sparking with pleasure, and she was making little noises on every exhale because it was so good, it was just so _good_. 

They were in a rhythm now, and she must have zoned out with it for a few moments, letting her body drive on autopilot, because when James nuzzled at her ear and was speaking, she was vaguely aware that he’d been speaking for a little bit. “Nnnngh,” she said, shuddering, “James—“

“Baby,” he said, breath ragged, “doll, sweetie, I can’t keep this up, I’m gonna—“

“Yeah,” she moaned, “yeah, it’s okay.”

“Inside you?” he asked, and she could feel him starting to tremble even as he kept up his rhythm.

“Yeah,” she said, “oh, it’s okay, James, it’s— oh— mmm!” He sped up a little and she shuddered, and really she had no idea how many times she’d come, or where one wave of pleasure ended and another began, because he really was hitting her just right on every fucking stroke and it was fucking amazing and she made another ridiculous noise and dug her nails into the backs of his shoulders. 

“Natalia,” he gasped, and went on in Russian,“oh, my love, I could live inside you forever, my love— my love—“ and his hips hitched and shoved up against hers as his whole body went stiff and he tightened his hold on the back of her neck. 

“Yes,” she panted, “fuck, yes James, yes.”

They shuddered into stillness together, his weight slowly settling onto her. He collapsed slightly to one side so that his metal arm, at least, supported its own weight. He wasn’t unmanageably heavy, without it. After a moment he caught his breath enough to pick up his head and find her mouth with his. 

His hair had come loose and was in their faces, so she pushed it back with one hand. His eyes were closed, lashes fanned dark on his flushed cheeks, mouth a little open as he caught his breath. He was beautiful, more so than anyone else she’d ever seen, and it felt strange in her chest to look at him, an odd squeezing that wasn’t because of the weight of his body on her ribcage. Or was it? Maybe it was, but she never wanted him to move. 

“You’re so good,” she murmured, “James, you’re so good,” and his lashes fluttered up and he breathed deeper, blinking as he focused his eyes on her. 

He gave her a lopsided smile, and brought his mouth down to kiss her again, soft and lingering. “Natalia,” he said, and she shivered; he was still half-hard inside her, pressed into her by his own weight, and his shoulders were huge above her, and the scent of his body and his breath filled her lungs and made her drowsy.

“Stay,” she sighed, and he rolled off her to one side, sliding deliciously out of her, and settled on his side, hauling her gently backward with his big hand across her ribcage until she settled in the crook of his body with him spooned around her, his nose buried under her hair at the nape of her neck. 

“Like this?” he whispered. 

“Mmmm,” she said, and slid off into sleep, fuzzy with endorphins, heart still beating hard and breath coming fast, his metal arm under the pillow they were sharing. She was dimly aware of a soft whirr as the arm recalibrated, then nothing. 

 

 


	2. Nine-Tenths of the Law

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conspiracy theories, common interests, and conversations with stubborn men.

_OK, so what do we really know about the Winter Soldier?_

_Everyone and their mother has gone over and over what footage there is, and what tiny amount of information there is on him in the Widow’s database dump. So let’s just lay out the facts, what we know for sure, what isn’t speculation.  
_ _> has either a prosthetic arm or an enhanced cybernetic glove of some kind, definitely on the left hand if not both-- enough footage exists to determine that he uses his two hands differently, as if one were stronger  
_ _> > footage of him in motion suggests the left arm to be much heavier than the right, backing up hypothesis that prosthetic/enhanced arm is only on one side-- replacement for a missing natural arm?  
_ _> > references in files to an implement that can be translated as a “prosthetic” backs up last conclusion  
_ _> is at least six feet tall, has physical characteristics suggesting he is male (shoulder to hip ratio, jaw to cheekbone ratio, shape of pelvis), is referred to as male in files in at least one location, thus is probably male  
_ _> white. Not much skin is visible in any photograph, but he definitely looks to be of some kind of European ancestry. His eyes are noted as blue in one place in the files, and one high-quality photograph of half of his face exists in which his irises do appear to be pale in color  
_ _> appears no more than fifty-five in age at the outside, given fluidity of motion, but appears in documentation going back to the sixties as an active agent; must be at least seventy, or a title held by several people  
_ _> no record whatsoever of any communications by him exist. We do not know if he can speak or write.   
_ _> Cryogenic facilities have been discovered, and documentation assumes their existence. It is very likely he has survived cryogenic freezing on several occasions, which could explain his great age but young appearance  
_ _> must be enhanced-- in strength, wound resistance, healing factor, and speed of reflexes, from fight footage, let alone the possibility of cryo-freeze, which study has indicated is unlikely to be survivable by a standard human_

_The standard conclusions we draw are mostly pretty well-supported by the above, but there are some pretty wild leaps we make. Remember, we don’t even know if he’s really male. Both arms and shoulders could be enhanced, we’ve never seen him out of body armor, and everything we know is circumstantial. None of the files on him are complete, none are unaltered. I’m not saying I think he’s not, I’m just saying that’s a classic assumption no one questions._

_What do we think we know? There’s a lot floating around that people believe to be true, but there is no reliable substantiation.  
_ _> He is a former Howling Commando, none other than Sgt James Barnes, the only Howling Commando to die in action  
_ _\-- how? there is a lot of handwaving about top-secret super soldier serum experiments, but nothing substantiated  
_ _> he is former KGB  
_ _\-- he appears in Soviet records intermittently, and it is unclear whether he is an asset belonging to the Soviets or to an ally  
_ _\-- the only real solid link is the red star decoration on his shoulder, but there is no explanation for it anywhere, and while it’s a pretty clear Communist thing it is possible it could mean something else, five-pointed stars are kind of a really common theme in modern heraldry and symbolism etcetera_

“Mom,” Jimmy said. “Mom. Mom. Mommy! Mom!”

“Baby, gimme a minute,” Lakeisha said. Jimmy did the whining hitching thing with his voice that he used to threaten crying, and she said, “Christ almighty, child, you gotta gimme a second to save the Internet, somebody’s wrong on the Internet, baby, I can’t let that stand!”

“That keyboard ‘bout to catch fire,” Jeremy said, flopping down next to her on the couch and hauling Jimmy over into his lap. “What’s the matter, baby? Your momma too busy messin’ around on the Internet?”

“I wanna play Kidzoo,” Jimmy whined, letting his head rest back against his uncle’s shoulder. 

“Jimmy, child,” Jeremy said, smoothing his hand over Jimmy’s close-cropped hair. “Your momma is like a superhero on the Internet, and it’s very important that she keep suckas in their place.” Lakeisha laughed. “She can’t just let them be wrong, the world could be in peril.”

“Mama’s a boring superhero,” Jimmy said.

“Wellll,” Jeremy said, “she’s no Captain America, that’s for sure.”

“Someday,” Lakeisha said, “someday,” but she didn’t have the mental capacity to finish the sentence. She was too busy proofreading her paragraph. No more time. She hit post and exited the webpage. “Okay. Okay, Jimmy. You sure you wanna play Kidzoo? Because I was just about to go in the kitchen and make cookies.”

“Oh,” Jeremy said, sitting up straighter, “oh, Jimmy, you can sit here if you want but I’m gonna go in the kitchen with your mom.”

Jimmy slid off Jeremy’s lap. “I wanna help make cookies!” he yelled, which was exactly what Lakeisha had wanted, partly because she was worried about Jimmy’s possibly-excessive screen time (pretty rich coming from a girl who spent as much time glued to a laptop screen as she did) and partly because he was a bit rough on the laptop and she really couldn’t afford to replace it if he ripped any more keys off. (She could live without Tab.)

“So what’s shakin’ on the Internet?” Jeremy asked, climbing to his feet after Jimmy shot out of the room.

“That Winter Soldier,” she said. “People are just so full of stupid about him.”

“He done anything lately?” Jeremy asked. She was a little self-conscious talking about him, because she knew Jeremy didn’t like to be compared to him but it was inevitable— the missing arm and all, mostly, and there’d been a lot of jokes about it in the family and down at the VA and it pissed Jeremy off and embarrassed him. But she couldn’t help but be fascinated by the mystery and controversy about the guy, and had become one of the staunchest proponents of eschewing rumors for research. She and a couple of friends were methodically combing through the Black Widow’s info dump to find out as much as they could about him. 

“There was a sighting in Texas,” she said, “at some thing the Avengers were at. But most of the buzz is still about that surveillance video.”

“The one where he’s dancin’?” Jeremy asked, wryly amused. He reached the mixer down off the top of the fridge for her, and sat with Jimmy in one of the chairs. 

“You seen it?” It didn’t seem like the kind of thing Jeremy would’ve clicked through. He habitually avoided videos. 

“I had to,” Jeremy said. “Boy can dance.”

“If you liked it,” Lakeisha said, “you shoulda put a ring on it.” She pulled out butter, eggs, found the flour, found the chocolate chips, found the baking powder, remembered it was baking soda instead, couldn’t find the baking soda. Jimmy wriggled out of his uncle’s lap and dragged a chair over so he could reach the mixer. 

“I’m gonna help!” he said. 

“You sure are, baby,” she said. “We’re gonna cook some of this dough so Gramma can have some cookies when she gets home, okay? We’re not just gonna eat it all.” She swiveled to point at Jeremy with the spoon.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Keesh,” Jeremy said. “You think that video was real?”

She laughed. “I do,” she said. “I really do.” She was pretty strongly in the faction that did, and had devoted a couple thousand words of analysis to it. 

“What makes you think it is?” Jeremy asked. 

“The account that posted it,” she said. “It’s pretty strongly, verifiably linked to the Black Widow. And while she’s not above misdirection sometimes, I truly don’t think she’d outright lie like that. It doesn’t suit her ends and isn’t her style.”

“So you really truly honestly think this Soviet assassin is a fan of Beyonce,” Jeremy said. 

“I do,” Lakeisha said. “I really do. Really really. All the details are spot-on, down to what brand of surveillance camera system took the video and all its settings and stuff. And all his physical details are consistent with all our other footage. If it’s not him, it’s someone really damn committed to faking it— and that begs the question, _who’d bother_?”

She noticed that Jeremy was laughing at her, and stuck her tongue out. “You laugh,” she said, “but I know my stuff, buddy.”

“You sure do,” he said, shoving to his feet and retrieving the missing baking soda from the top shelf. “You sure do.”

 

* * *

 

Natasha kept her eyes down, stirring her coffee. “He won’t come in,” she said. 

“Not even a good old-fashioned Steve Rogers guilt trip could do the trick, huh,” Fury said, tapping his fingers on the table next to his saucer. “I figured for sure that’d do it.”

“No dice,” she said. “He’s convinced it would pit you and Tony against Steve and, in his words, give HYDRA the ending they always wanted, which was, and I quote, _everything fucking wrecked forever_.”

“So he’s an optimist,” Fury mused. “I hadn’t figured on that.”

“What about this surprises you?” Natasha asked dryly. 

“Nothin’, I guess,” Fury said with an expressive sigh. He looked over at her, considering, and she met his gaze thoughtfully. “But he trusts you.”

“More or less,” she said. “Not unquestioningly, Nick. Don’t ask me to lure him in. I don’t have enough of a hold over him to be sure it’d work, and if he thinks I have betrayed him like that, then we lose what little contact we have with him, and he’s in the wind again.”

“How much of a hold do you have over him?” Nick asked, eyebrows raised. 

Natasha shook her head, letting herself go expressionless; Nick would pick up on any attempt to manipulate him to buy her sincerity. “He eats my food,” she said, “he pets my cat, he trusts me to make him coffee, he uses my shampoo. I am certain he sleeps in my presence.”

“With you?” Nick asked, narrowing his eye; she’d surprised him. 

“Sometimes,” she said, tilting her head and giving him a challenging eyebrow raise. 

“Do _you_ sleep in _his_ presence?” Nick asked, letting some incredulity show.

“He’s incredibly dangerous,” she allowed. But she was trying to make a new habit, of lying less, and she’d never really been in the habit of lying to Nick. “But yes. I have, a couple of times.”

“You know what he’s capable of,” Nick said, alarmed. “Even if he seems like he’s all right, the sleeper programming-- I know you’ve read the file.”

“I know,” Natasha said. “I’m aware.”

“You’ve never been a fool about sentimental things before,” Nick said, brow furrowing. “ _Did_ you know him?”

“I assure you, I’m not being a fool now,” Natasha said coolly, but she couldn’t really be offended that Nick was being protective. It was reassuring, despite how it shouldn’t have been. “At this point I still don’t know whether I knew him, Nick, but I do understand him. I know his motivations and I know where he’s coming from. And,” she went on, when Nick looked skeptical and would have spoken, “I fully realize what he’s capable of. And what he’s not.”

“You don’t think he’s capable of hurting you?” Nick asked, both eyebrows all the way up. 

“I know that he is,” she snapped, annoyed. “Nick! Do you think I have lost my mind?”

“You’re feeding him,” Nick said, “sleeping with him, he’s living in your apartment, you’ve procured him weapons-- of course I know about that, Natasha--”

“I bought them from one of your people,” Natasha said, exasperated. “If you did not know I would assume you were a life-model decoy and not the real Nick Fury at all!”

Nick tilted his head. “Fair,” he said. 

“Anyway I bought that cool one for me,” she said. “I gave him my old one.”

“Of course you did,” Nick said, with a fond little eye-roll. 

“We’ve run a number of missions together,” Natasha said. “He has intel nobody else does.”

“I am aware of that too,” Nick said. “Which is why I want so badly for you to bring him in.”

Natasha examined her fingernails. “So you tell me, Nick. How would that go, exactly?” He regarded her, unimpressed, and she went on. “I wheedle and cajole him and tell him everything will be fine. And I waltz into Stark Tower with the Winter Soldier on my arm.” 

“Maybe not Stark Tower,” Nick conceded.

“And I say don’t worry, he’s totally safe, he’s just here to help us,” Natasha went on relentlessly. “And Tony says, that guy shanked my parents. And Hill says, that guy shot Fury. And the US Government says, hey, that guy shot a lot of people.”

“You think I’m tellin’ the US Government a damn thing,” Fury said.

“The others are bad enough,” Natasha said. “You’re going to say to him, tell me everything you know, and when he says okay, you’re going to give him a sandwich and sit down with him, and when he has told you everything he claims to remember, you’re going to say okay thanks, here’s a dozen doughnuts, call me when you’re in town, we’ll hang out.”

Fury made a sour face. “Natasha,” he said. “We have to debrief him. But you can’t think Steve’s really gonna let us do anything terrible to him.”

“And Tony’s going to be totally fine with just taking Steve’s word for it that the guy’s safe,” Natasha said. 

“Tony’s more fine with that kind of thing than you think,” Nick said. “Cap’s in charge of the Avengers, Tony acknowledges that. If Cap says we let Bucky go, we let Bucky go.”

Natasha stared at him blankly for a long moment. “You are trying to convince yourself,” she said. “You think if you can make me believe it, it will become true? No, Nick. No!”

Fury scowled. “Steve’s got the authority to pull it off,” he said. “Especially with me backing him. Which I will, Natasha.”

“The day you control Tony Stark is the day they bury him in the ground,” Natasha said. “You and Steve both. Not between the two of you could you do this, even if you presented a perfectly unified front.”

“Which is,” Fury said, with an air of admission, “why I was saying, we don’t do this at Stark Tower.”

“I could get you a one-on-one meeting,” Natasha said, “maybe. I am not bringing him in. I am not bringing him to an ambush. I am not seeing him in custody. I am letting him decide something on his own terms. Is it that incredible that I’d want that for him?”

“That’s more than you had,” Fury said. 

“It is,” Natasha said. 

“Do you wish you’d had a choice?” Fury asked. 

“I have no regrets,” Natasha said. “But he is different, Nick.”

“Does he deserve more consideration than you do?” Nick asked. 

She tapped her fingers thoughtfully on the table, then glanced up, catching his gaze. “He hasn’t gotten caught,” she said. “I got caught, fair and square, and had to bargain for my freedom. That informed my choices. He came to me freely, and made sure he had an exit when he did. He’s not in custody, so he gets a free choice. That’s how it works.”

“Possession _is_ nine-tenths,” Nick conceded grudgingly. “We could catch him now, though. Whether you cooperate or not.”

Natasha stared at him, letting herself go entirely blank because he’d understand that. “If I do not cooperate, you will not catch him,” she said coldly. “If I am attacked I will defend myself, and you simply do not possess the resources to match both the Winter Soldier _and_ the Black Widow.”

Nick examined her face for a moment, before quirking his eyebrows and tilting his head a little, conceding. “Fair enough,” he said. 

 

 

***

 

Later, in the car, Natasha sat and breathed very, very slowly as she processed the fact that she had just openly chosen James over the Avengers. That was… premature. That was impulsive. That wasn’t playing the game. 

But she didn’t want to play the fucking game, she wanted Nick to realize how high she felt these stakes to be. If he knew he’d lose, he wouldn’t gamble her like that. 

She hoped. 

 

 


	3. Baby Let's Play House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James and Lakeisha come to an arrangement. 
> 
> James and Natasha don't... quite.

It took Lakeisha a good minute or two to recognize the guy when he came back. He was wearing a hoodie and a disreputable baseball cap and slouching around the store in an utterly ignorable manner, and Lakeisha only noted him absently, and only focused any real attention on him when the other customers in the store had left and she was alone with him. She always knew exactly where people were in the store, and if it was just her and one other person she was always on alert. It was just reflexes. 

So it was only when everyone else had left and he was still reading the ingredients on the pill bottles that she recognized him. He glanced over at her and grinned and she said, “Hey, man, what the hell you always lookin’ for in those ingredient lists?”

He shrugged, and there was something shyly pleased in his expression-- his body language was all different without the woman around, no swagger and no bravado, no easy grace. He was subdued and sort of… downtrodden. “I got a weird metabolism,” he said. “Stuff affects me all funny. Some of the generic stuff works better than the name brands, if they use different fillers.” 

“You got chemical sensitivities or allergies?” Lakeisha asked. She was familiar with all that stuff. 

“Not exactly,” he said. “More like… I got exposed to some stuff, and it messed me up a little. So I just… trial and error and some stuff I handle better than others.”

Something about that caught at her mind, and she said, “Like Gulf War syndrome?”

He looked at her, eyebrows pulling together. “Gulf War Syndrome?”

She nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “A lot of the guys who served over there the first time came home sick, in weird ways nobody could explain.” She looked him over. Yeah, he could be a vet, that could be it. Something weird about his left arm, too, though she’d seen him use the fingers so it wasn’t a prosthetic. He just… there was something about him. He was a guy who’d seen some shit. 

“It’s probably not Gulf War Syndrome,” he said, looking mildly amused. 

“Are you a vet, though?” she asked. 

He looked taken-aback, and there was a flash of a more intense expression that she couldn’t evaluate-- wariness? “What makes you say that?” he said. 

She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “My brother is, I dunno. I don’t mean to pry.”

“I am,” he said, “but it’s complicated.”

“Jer doesn’t like to talk about it either,” she said. “I won’t bug you, man. I just wondered.”

He looked at her for a long moment, considering. He was… He looked tired, looked worn-down, like he wasn’t sleeping, and she wondered if he’d broken up with the impossibly beautiful foreign girlfriend. The thin skin under his eyes was almost bruised-looking, and he was carrying his weight strangely, as if his left arm were too heavy. Nerve damage, she’d guess. “Kind of you,” he said finally. 

She shrugged. “I’m nice,” she said, “it’s my only superpower,” and that made him blink and made her remember his strange reaction to the Captain America magazine. 

“I think fucking up is my superpower,” he said a little hollowly, staring at nothing, and she thought, definitely got dumped, and mentally raised her defenses. She was absolutely going to be immune to any attempts at flirting now. She put him into the mental category of “like a brother” and that was that; she had learned exceptional discipline the hard way. 

She laughed kindly. “Aw man,” she said, “I think that’s a pretty common one. You’d be hard-pressed to make me believe you’re significantly worse than average.”

He made a face, amused despite himself. “I’ve had some pretty statistically-significant failures,” he said. 

She shrugged. “Have you started your quest for Internet fame by becoming the Winter Elvis?”

He laughed. “Nat showed me how to use her video camera,” he said. “We made a beauty tutorial. How to set hair in rag curls. It was fun. But I don’t think we’ll post it. It turned out really funny but probably not as funny as I think.”

“How to set hair in rag curls,” Lakeisha said. “Oh man. I like it, Winter Elvis the beauty vlogger.”

“Right?” he said. His smile, though tired, at least looked genuine. “So I gotta learn video editing. I got some computer training but… it’s a lot.” He did have a nice smile, the kind that gave him crinkles around his eyes. “Nat helps but she’s got a lot to do.”

“Nat’s the girl that was here with you?” Lakeisha asked. The impossibly beautiful maybe-not-girlfriend? 

“Yeah,” he said, “with the red hair,” and he gestured toward his head. “I put the curlers in her hair. It was fun. Came out good too.” He grinned. “I still got it.”

“She your girlfriend?” Lakeisha asked, risking a step onto delicate ground. 

His smile disappeared but he looked thoughtful, not heartbroken. “Kinda,” he said. “We got a weird history but since I got back she’s really been there for me.”

Got back. “What, did you just get out of the Army?”

He made a face. “Kinda,” he said. “It’s complicated. I was in a real long time, then I was doing-- kinda, related stuff, and it just feels like I’ve been away from-- you know, from normal people-- for a really long time and forgot how to, how to live, you know?” He made a few fumbling gestures. 

“Oh,” Lakeisha said, “I feel you.” She reconsidered, and said, “I mean, not that I’ve done that. I just, I get it, that’s all.”

He nodded. “Your brother okay?” he asked, and she clocked instantly where he was headed with it.

“He got messed up pretty bad,” she said. “Lost most of his arm, lost hearing on one side, scars on his face a lil bit. He can’t work right now, can’t sleep good, he’s havin’ a tough time. But he hangs out with my kid and they have a great time together. He’s gonna be okay and we’ll figure it out.” She nodded at him. “How about you?”

He looked down with a shy smile. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s why I was askin’. Messed up my arm, but my hearing’s okay. Brain damage though.” He said the last with a quick flick of his eyes up toward her, like he was watching to see her reaction.

She nodded slowly. “That shit’s hard,” she said. “It just, it sucks no matter what.” She thought it over. “Listen, I know video editing. I can teach you, if Nat’s too busy.”

His face lit up warily. “Really?” he said. 

She smiled reassuringly at him. “Yeah, really,” she said. “Listen, lemme give you my Twitter handle, you send me what you got and I can see what I can do.”

“That’s awesome,” he said, and he still looked achingly tired but his smile lit up his whole face. He was awfully pretty. If the raw footage was any good at all, Lakeisha knew he had the makings of a wildly popular video series here. It was worth taking on yet more speculative work. YouTube ads could pay all right; baby could get a new pair of shoes.

“I think it will be awesome, yeah,” she said. 

 

* * * 

“If you won’t meet with Fury,” Natasha said, “I don’t want you tailing me on Avengers missions.”

James turned, one hip propped against the counter. Liho was curled around his shoulders, claws digging freely into the metal side, cradled somewhat in the hood of his sweatshirt. He had the sweatshirt unzipped and wasn’t wearing anything under it, and his flannel pyjama pants hung low on his hips. She wasn’t going to let his flat stomach and gorgeously-sculpted hips distract her, though. “I won’t tail you if you just tell me where you’re going,” he said, gesturing with the spatula. 

“So you’ll just meet me there,” Natasha said. “James--”

“I just, I can’t,” James said, frustrated, and turned back to the eggs he was frying. “Sometimes I don’t know whether there’s something I know or not until I see the place, and the situation.”

“And while you’re there, you might as well participate,” Natasha concluded for him. “But the other Avengers don’t know you, don’t know what to expect, and don’t like it at all. One of these times they’re going to trap you or something.”

James scraped at the pan, radiating tension and reluctance. “I’m not,” he said. “It’s-- I can’t--” 

Natasha waited, patiently, letting him work through what he was trying to convey. “James,” she said finally. 

He banged the pan a bit too forcefully onto another burner and retrieved two plates from the cabinet, steadying Liho with a practiced gesture. “I’m not opposed to working with them,” he said finally, “is the problem, because they don’t want to _work_ with me, they want to _dissect_ me.” 

“Come and meet with Nick,” Natasha said. 

James divided the eggs between both plates, retrieved the toast from the toaster, and plunked the plates onto the table, easing into his chair and scooping Liho down from his shoulder into his lap. Liho allowed it a little grudgingly, standing and turning around to settle herself more comfortably in his lap.

“You really think he’s going to want to talk to me just like that,” James said. “I shot him three times in the chest, Natasha.”

“You’ve shot me twice,” she said. 

“Yes, but I shot him three times at once,” James said, “recently, nearly-fatally, and he is a man nearing seventy.”

“Doesn’t change things,” Natasha said. “You’re far from the only one to try to kill him lately.”

James buttered his toast far more emphatically than toast deserved. “What could he possibly say to me?” he asked, frowning at the innocent toast. “What could I even say to him?”

“That you’re sorry for shooting him,” Natasha said, “to which his only rational response would be to acknowledge that it wasn’t your fault.”

“I have a lot of conversations like that coming,” James said, pausing to rub his face and look up at her, “and I got the feeling not all the people I apologize to are gonna care whether I meant to do it or not.”

“That’s true,” Natasha said. “But Nick needs to meet you, James. He needs to evaluate whether you’re in control of your own motivations. He needs to get an idea of whether you’re acting independently. He needs to see for himself that you aren’t the automaton that came after him anymore.”

“And a chat over coffee is going to assure him of this,” James said. 

“It’s a start,” Natasha said. 

James chewed for a moment, inscrutable. “He doesn’t trust you,” he said. “He doesn’t think you could tell him the truth about me.” He raised an eyebrow at her, shaking his head a little. “I thought you’d worked with this guy for a while.”

Natasha carefully did not grit her teeth. Sometimes she forgot how sharp James was. “That’s not what this is about,” she said, not letting him see that she was annoyed. “You’re changing the subject. He’d be an idiot to take my word for it that the man who shot him three times in the chest and, I might add, who has been brainwashed and tortured for seventy years is just fine now and there’s nothing to worry about.”

James’s jaw tightened a little. “I am, though,” he said. 

“I have found you catatonic in the bathtub twice in the last month,” Natasha pointed out. 

“But I haven’t tried to kill you even once,” he countered easily.

 

* * *  

 

The handle James had scribbled down for Lakeisha sent her a link. She considered it a moment, then clicked, and it was to Dropbox, a series of video files. She downloaded them, and her virus protection didn’t flag anything. Good. 

 

It was clearly James, in a somewhat-indistinct apartment, using a nicer camera than his cellphone would have. The woman was there. They both had clay facemasks on, and James had his hair wrapped in a towel turban. It was formatted like a fairly typical beauty tutorial, and featured James setting the woman’s hair in rag curls. Amusingly, he made the rags out of a black t-shirt that had been consigned to the rag pile because, he claimed, of a bullet hole. He also, Lakeisha noticed, was quite competent at setting the woman’s hair. 

She watched the video, which was in several cuts, then went back and watched it again, and stopped. At one point, James said dismissively, “I got enough metal in me,” and raised his left hand and wiggled it, and it was the only real concession she’d seen that he was supposed to really be the Winter Soldier: His left hand was encased in metal. 

She opened her video editing software and paged through frame by frame. It wasn’t that high-resolution, for her to zoom in on it particularly, but she could see that it was very, very convincingly metal. And it was dextrous, he used it normally even with the metal glove on. His t-shirt had long sleeves, so there wasn’t anything visible above the wrist, and later he put a rubber glove on, but it was a translucent glove, and the metal gleamed through. 

It really looked-- it looked good, there were no wrinkles, no sign it was made of anything beyond metal. 

He was already following her, so she followed him back and sent him a direct message. “That’s a hell of a convincing robot hand you got,” she wrote. 

He answered almost immediately. “Isn’t it? I went to a lot of trouble.”

“Well, it shows. Nice work.” She thought a moment, watched another snippet where he laughed almost directly into the camera. The way his eyes crinkled when he laughed, he looked really genuinely kind. More importantly, though, he was attractive and photogenic and charismatic, and he had the makings of a real Youtube star, in the way nobody she’d really worked with before did. It was really, really promising. “I’ll work with you,” she wrote. “Maybe you should do it more deadpan, though. More convincing.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he wrote. 

“Maybe next time rinse off the clay face mask?” she wrote. 

“Maybe,” he wrote back, “or maybe I’ll keep myself off facial recognition software. I really did used to do covert ops, y’know.”

Lakeisha didn’t answer that one, since she really wasn’t sure if he was serious.

  

They exchanged email addresses, and came up with a contract of sorts; Lakeisha was honest and upfront with him, stating her motivations, and he in turn seemed pretty pleased not to have to learn video editing in return for giving her a sizable cut of any advertising revenues in return for her work and involvement. “I got a lot on my plate,” he wrote. “And I’m not sayin’ I don’t need money, but I do have other income sometimes, the money’s less of a big deal to me than this project actually happening.”

“Money’s a big deal to me,” she said, “I won’t lie, buuut— I am super into the Winter Soldier conspiracy theories and I’d love to see some better-quality humor come out of it.”

 

The second video was awesome. He’d shot it in two takes meant to be interspersed, playing two parts. In the first, he was dressed as the Winter Soldier-- really convincing tac gear, long sleeves and gloves, goggles and a facemask just like the security footage-- really really good, actually, and the guns looked real-- and the second, he was dressed as a bored security guard manning a metal detector, and the gag was the Winter Soldier going through the metal detector and the bored guard not really paying attention and making him discard weapons one at a time. 

The weapons looked real. Guns, knives, a machine pistol, grenades. None of it looked plastic. The metal detector looked like it was made of wood, but the weapons were incredibly realistic. 

Finally, the last gag was the Soldier exasperatedly depositing an entire metal left arm in one of the bins, and the guard yawning and saying “it’s probably your belt”. 

Lakeisha went back to look at the arm in the bin. It was… fake, it was a mannequin arm covered in tinfoil, she was pretty sure. Nowhere near as convincing as the glove he had on in every scene, the same one from the other one-- it looked real. 

There was no shot of him as the soldier without the arm-- his reaction shot to the guard telling him it was his belt was from the right side. 

He’d discarded the goggles but not the facemask. As the guard, his hair was scraped straight back, he had a hat on, and he never faced the camera directly. She wondered if that was deliberate; he projected such a nonchalant air, but none of these angles would work with facial recognition software. 

 

She was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion he was not only serious, but knew what he was about.  

 


	4. Subterfuge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Assorted vignettes (in which Cap does not punch a reporter), and a meeting, at last.

  
  


“Have you seen the Winter Soldier video?” the interviewer asked, one of those professional celebrity red-carpet hounding types. Captain America, dashingly dressed in civilian attire for this star-studded event, turned his head distractedly, and blinked at the camera.

“Which one?” he asked, frowning.

“Where he’s doing the Single Ladies dance,” the interviewer said.

Cap shook his head with a rueful laugh. “I have,” he said. “I’m told it’s from a verified source, actually.”

“Is it some kind of commentary, do you think?”

Cap was still shaking his head a little, and glanced up. “Commentary?”

“Sure,” the interviewer said. “On your relationship.”

“ _My_ relationship?” Cap frowned.

“With him,” the interviewer said. “C’mon, everyone knows he’s really Bucky Barnes, and the two of you had, like a whole thing goin’ on, back in the day.”

Cap’s face went blank.

“I guess it’s hardly fair,” the interviewer went on. “It’s not like gay marriage was legal back then.”

“That’s not funny,” Cap said, but he didn’t look angry so much as sad. “That’s really not the sort of thing you can make jokes about.”

“Aw,” the interviewer said, “c’mon, I’m not being mean! It’s okay to be gay.”

“I know it is,” Cap said. “It’s not a punchline. It’s not funny. It’s real life, for a lot of people. Why would you mock a guy over somethin’ like that?”

“Are you saying the Winter Soldier really is James Barnes?” the interviewer asked.

“No, _you_ said that,” Cap pointed out. “Is your whole thesis that the Winter Soldier was swayed to act for the enemy not by brainwashing, but by a fit of pique when I didn’t _marry_ him? That’s the joke?”

“I kind of thought it was funny,” the interviewer offered, a little feebly.

Cap shook his head. “Keep tryin’,” he said. “That’s pretty sick. Maybe if you tried one of those godawful jokes with the dead babies in garbage trucks or whatever, like everybody’s trying to shock me with lately— maybe one of those would be less mean-spirited.”

“I guess the modern sense of humor is a little different,” the interviewer said.

Cap snorted. “Not hardly,” he said. “Please. I was in the Army. Let’s just say I’ve seen some things, and leave it at that. You gotta try harder than that to shock me, I just generally don’t think it’s funny unless it’s, you know, actually funny.”

“That is harsh, bro,” the interviewer said, and glanced at the camera. “I just got owned by Captain America. I should probably retire.”

“Why gild the lily, though,” Cap said reasonably, interrupting the interviewer with a gesture. “The Winter Soldier, in all his tac gear, in the middle of an op, deciding that the way to distract the guards was to do a completely faithful rendition of a popular music video’s dance? That’s goddamn hilarious. You don’t gotta try to spin it past that. Let it stand on its own. I mean, maybe ask _him_ if he meant anything by it. If he did, I wouldn’t be the one to guess what it was.” And with that, he walked away.

  
  
  


Steve’s uniform was soaked through with blood and he was propped in a corner on the floor of the quinjet, folded in on himself and looking pale and queasy. Natasha sat next to him, close enough to touch, and he turned his head slightly, not quite looking at her but half-smiling grimly in ¾ profile.

“Hey soldier,” Natasha said, sliding her shoulder and hip more firmly against his. “Healing up?”

“I’ll be fine,” he said, a little indistinctly.

“I saw that interview clip,” she said. “Where you basically told that guy he was unfunny garbage.”

“What a fuckin’ asshole,” Steve groused. “Jesus fuck.”

“That was an incredibly graceful burn,” she said. “I commend you. I asked and Bucky says his choice of the Single Ladies dance was actually nothing to do with the lyrics, he actually didn’t look them up until well after he’d decided to learn the dance. He just liked the glittery left hand.”

“I figured,” Steve said.

“He also said he’d punch the reporter, but I told him it wasn’t worth the hassle of doing it incognito or the logistics of doing it cognito but uncaptured.”

“I appreciate the sentiment,” Steve said, “but if the reporter had really needed punching, I’m capable of doing it myself.” He glanced over at Natasha. “And I figured, you know, he hadn’t defected to the Soviets because I wouldn’t gay-marry him.”

“Oh Steve,” Natasha said, because it was painfully obvious that there was some real hurt underlying that. She leaned against him a little harder, and finally mustered herself enough to slip her arm around his back. 

 

* * * 

 

Natasha leaned forward a little on her barstool, re-crossing her legs, to cover the motion as she checked her tracking device. “Seven hundred meters,” she murmured, leaning in toward James a little bit, flirty. He glanced over, looking down the front of her blouse appreciatively (which honestly could either have been for the sake of his cover or genuine), and said, “I guess I won’t insult you by asking again if you’re sure about this.”

“I told you,” she said, “he’s like a father to me.”

The look James gave her was too blank for his cover, as he tried to figure out how serious she was. She poked him playfully in the side. “Don’t poke me,” he growled, slipping back into character.

“My grumpy bear,” she said fondly, sounding besotted.

“Woman,” he said, “finish your drink while I close out this tab. I got plans for you.”

Natasha giggled, sucking ostentatiously at the stirrer straw in her bright green sugary drink so as not to smudge her overdone lipstick. “That a promise?” she tittered.

“Baby,” he said, “you know I’m good for it.” He carelessly signed the slip the bartender brought over, pocketed the credit card with his current alias on it, and threw a handful of money on the bar to cover the tip.

Natasha made an obnoxious noise with her straw, rolling her eyes at his feigned impatience, and then tottered after him on her platform stilettos, as if she didn’t know how to walk properly in them.

He let her take his arm, feigning disinterest beyond a cursory appreciative glance down her blouse again. He had his phone out and was pretending to text, but had the tracking program up on it surreptitiously.

Watching the tracking program without looking like she was, Natasha led them unerringly to the correct taxi. James opened the door for her, tucking his phone away and blatantly craning his neck to look down her shirt. Natasha put her hand up to pull him down by the jaw so that they half-fell into the cab, and James hooked the door shut behind them and lowered his head to pretend to kiss her while she checked the front of the cab.

“I always forget,” Fury drawled as he pulled the cab away from the curb, “how fuckin’ obnoxious it is when you giggle like that.”

James scrambled to sit upright, arm whirring audibly with his haste. He was looking at Fury in the mirror, and she saw his jaw tighten.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Fury said, “I hope you wouldn’t really treat a lady like that.”

James grinned dangerously, mastering his moment of nerves. “I do what she tells me,” he said. “I’ve found that’s the best way to survive in this world.”

“Smarter than you look,” Fury said, navigating traffic nonchalantly. “You know, it’s only pretty recently that I realized what a challenging shot you took to assassinate me.”

“I’m good at what I do,” James said, and Natasha heard his arm whirr again as he fidgeted a little nervously. “I’d apologize but obviously you know I had no choice in the matter or you wouldn’t be meeting with me now.”

“I’m a pretty forgiving guy,” Fury said. “You never had eyes on me, did you.”

“I had a positive ID on you going into the apartment,” James said. “I was able to figure your position from reflections and process of elimination.”

“And then you must have been watching Rogers’s sight line to figure out where I moved to when I stood up,” Fury said.

“Yeah,” James said, with a funny little half-smile. “I didn’t have that good a look at him but I could tell he was talking to someone standing up, and I knew how tall you were compared to him. Then a triangular spread of shots for coverage.”

“You got me with all three slugs, you sonuvabitch,” Fury said.

“If I’d missed they would have assumed I needed maintenance,” James said with delicate, precise distaste. “I never was overly fond of maintenance.”

“Fair,” Fury said. “I just can’t believe you knew exactly where I was, down to how wide I was.”

James shrugged. “Like I said,” he said. “I’m good at what I do.”

“I never doubted you were,” Fury said. “So I’m gathering, from the shit you’ve been pulling lately, that you want in on fighting bad guys.”

“I have some bones to pick,” James said. “I’m not real keen on working for anybody, though.”

“I hear you there,” Fury said. “But that’s no reason for us to work at cross-purposes.” He checked his mirrors responsibly as he changed lanes. “I’ll cut to the chase. Romanoff seems to trust you. In my experience that’s a rare thing, and that makes it a pretty powerful endorsement. I just gotta ask you one thing though.”

He paused, as he looked down the road for traffic before making a left turn. James let the silence spin out a moment, and Natasha watched the light moving across his face as he slouched as if relaxed in the back seat. “So ask,” James said finally.

“I know who you are, of course,” Fury said. “I know you know too. I know you were closer than blood to Steve Rogers. Now, I’d be a fool if I didn’t keep half an eye on Cap, and from that I know, you haven’t so much as called him on the phone. Is there a reason you’re staying away from him?”

“Yup,” James said. “Plenty of reasons.”

The silence stretched for another moment, longer this time, until it was plain that was all James planned to say on the matter. “Any you’d care to share?” Fury asked.

“Nope,” James said. “I will say this, though: I know you got half an eye on him, because I got more than that on him and I watch you lookin’. I’m not threatening anybody or anything, I’m just sayin’ though, people who leave Steve Rogers the hell alone generally have longer, happier lives than people who mess with him.”

“I got no plans to mess with him,” Fury said. “But what that says to me is that it’s not that you’re mad at him, or consider him an enemy, or something.”

“No,” James said.

“In your observations of him,” Fury said, “you might have picked up that he’s a little… he’s had some trouble adjusting to the 21st century. Have you maybe noticed anything like that?”

“Maybe,” James said, noncommittal. He clearly did not want to be having this conversation.

“I’m not sayin’ anything specific, but it did seem to me that maybe you could say he was… a little lonely,” Fury said. “A bit isolated. And maybe I’m just an old man but it seemed that he’d want to see his last living friend again.”

“I think you know it’s not that simple,” James said wearily. “Bear in mind that whatever I look like, I’m older than you.”

“Fair,” Fury said.

“I’d wager you have an even keener eye on the ways of the world,” James said. “I’ve had a pretty specialized seven decades or so, so you might have a bit more actual wide-ranging experience than me. So you surely have an even clearer view than I do of just what would happen if Steve Rogers’s old pal from back in the day showed up on the doorstep of Avengers’ Tower to just hang out.”

Fury tilted his head, then nodded solemnly, signaling as he pulled into a driveway. “I figured you knew that,” he said. “I just wanted to be sure.”

“It’s not something the Winter Soldier can have,” James said. “I don’t get that kind of happy ending.”

Fury parked the car, shut the engine off, and turned to look directly at them. He glanced at Natasha, considered her a moment, then focused on James. “I just wanted to be sure we were on the same page about that before I suggested what I’ve been thinking,” he said.

“I guess we’re on the same page,” James said.

“So I’ll cut the crap then. I was thinking,” Fury said, “that you could covertly work for us. Rumors’ve already got it that you’re acting as a freelance mercenary out there. HYDRA’s scared you’re coming for them, but so are the remains of SHIELD, so. Nobody knows what the hell to do, but everybody’s scared of you.”

James considered him in silence, but Natasha knew him well enough now to see how far ahead he was already thinking. She could read the little flickers of his eyes as they changed focus with his thoughts. “You want me to hang out my shingle, take jobs, and work for you as a double agent,” James said. “Which would involve dragging my name through the mud and removing any hope of ever getting redeemed in the public eye, but there wasn’t much hope of that to begin with really.”

“Well,” Fury said, “exactly.”

“I’m in,” James said. “But I should point out, I’m a little low on funds and equipment and I think it’s a lot to ask of me not to tell Steve that it’s a front.”

“It would destroy Steve,” Fury said, “so I’ll bring him in on it eventually. He’s better at keeping secrets than he lets on.”

“And it would neatly sidestep the issue of him making an ass of himself every time someone says something truthful about me,” James said, smoothly enough that Natasha knew he’d been thinking about this himself.

“Yes,” Fury said, “I’d thought that too. Well, SHIELD is a bit disorganized and under-funded, but I can certainly get some discretionary funds pointed your way.”

“I want a list of everyone who’s in on my role,” James said, “and I want it updated at all times, and I want everyone on that list to know that I know, and understand that if there are any leaks and I survive them, I will be dealing with them personally. Is that pretty clear for you?”

“It is,” Fury said, “and I understand.” He squinted at James for a moment. “You’re really not much at all like I expected.”

“This is  _really_  not my first rodeo,” James said tiredly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My earlier suspicions were correct, and this is just not a very popular story! But, I have enough of this written that I'm posting it for me more than anything else. It's a slow start too, most of the plot hasn't even come about. Not my best work. Maybe it's the ship, maybe it's the time of year, maybe it's just not as attention-catching as other series I've done. BUT. I am enjoying myself, and maybe I'm being self-indulgent but I do think there's enough here that other people will enjoy to make it worthwhile to post. :)  
> That said, if you like it, I could really use a comment or a rec. This time of year's hard on those of us with wonky brain chemistry who find winters reallllly dark and cold. <3  
> And I'm the worst at replying to comments, I get communication issues intermittently where I just can't make myself post responses, and sometimes I freak myself out that if I don't have anything real clever to say people will think I'm just boosting my comment count or something, or being patronizing or whatever, so if I don't answer comments or asks or fan mails, don't think I treasure them any less.
> 
> And oh yeah, I'm [on Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/bomberqueen17/), say hi and maybe [reblog](http://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/129503829379/new-chapter-up-chapter-4-in-which-a-meeting)?


	5. You'll Never Walk Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Discussions of Internet presences, and introduction of Wanda as a character. This is the punchline, sort of-- why James thinks it's a good idea to saturate the Internet with his authentic self. It's not all fun and games, and he's not loony.

  


“I think your boy is taking all this a little far,” Fury said. Natasha glanced over at James, who was perched silent, grinning, in the passenger seat.

“Taking all what a little far?” Natasha asked.

“Take me off the goddamn speaker,” Fury said.

“Nick,” Natasha said, pretending shock, “that would be illegal. I’m driving, I can’t hold a phone in my hand.”

“Oh,” Fury said, “oh, I’d _hate_ for you to break the law, that would be _just awful_.”

“You know you’re like a father to me,” Natasha said. “Always with my best interests at heart.”

“I raised enough kids,” Fury said, “I ain’t doin’ another one. And on that note, control your boy.”

“I don’t have a boy,” Natasha said.

“So you know how there are about a zillion people on the Internet pretending to be the Winter Soldier,” Fury said, sounding deeply weary.

“Are there now,” Natasha said. She hadn’t made a point of searching much for it. She’d seen enough parodies of herself in the wake of the data dump, had grown tired of blundering painfully up against joking references to things that had nearly killed her. She had just assumed the same would happen for James, and she glanced over at him. He shrugged.

“Oh yes,” Fury said. “There are bloggers, vloggers— that’s the ones who make video blogs, if you weren’t up on the lingo— viners, Instagrammers, Tumblrers, Redditors, forum denizens, YouTubers, Facebookers, MySpacers, any site you can think of is just rotten with all kinds of people playing all kinds of games. Conspiracy theorists are having a field day.”

“I’m not surprised,” Natasha said, remembering how James had struck up a conversation with that convenience store girl. “Let me guess, there’s a subsection of people who believe the Winter Soldier is where Elvis really went after his so-called demise.”

“Oh, so you do know about this?” Fury said. “Natasha, there’s such a thing as hiding in plain sight, and then there’s just being an idiot.”

“What,” Natasha said, and looked over at James. He shrugged, and made an indignant gesture at the road as if her taking her eyes off it were dangerous compared with how she normally drove. “What do you mean?”

“He’s one of them,” Fury said. “Your buddy there, he’s egging them on by participating.”

Natasha sighed. “Is he now,” she said.

“Oh yeah,” Fury said. “He updated it from your home IP address cluster like five times, Natasha, which is how I knew for sure it was him, but apart from that, he’s not really being particularly careful. The bio says, and I quote, _brainwashed cyborg assassin for hire, kind of an asshole, ask me about my tragic backstory_! The profile pic is a duckface selfie with the goggles on. And his longform name is given as _If you have to ask you can’t afford me_.”

James was working very hard not to giggle out loud, lips wrapped over teeth and eyes innocently wide. “Is that so,” Natasha said.

“Oh,” Fury said, “it’s so.” He sighed. “I’m also pretty sure he’s been doing a series of videos as The Winter Elvis, as well.” He pronounced the name with delicate precision, as if it were something disgusting. “He’s pretty canny so a positive ID is tricky, but I got my reasons for thinking it’s really him. Not least of which is that _you’re in one of the videos_ , Natasha.”

“I didn’t know he was really going to put it up,” she said, which wasn’t strictly true, but she hadn’t thought he’d follow through, that was honest enough. The exasperation in Fury’s tone was approximately the most hilarious thing she’d ever heard, even if he probably was right. What was James thinking? That kind of exposure was pretty dangerous.

“Isn’t he in the car with you? Can’t you ask him what the hell he’s thinking?”

Natasha looked at James. James clamped his lips shut stubbornly, averted his eyes as if somehow that was going to make it like he wasn’t here. “I’ll find out,” she said.

 

It was a couple hundred miles later when James finally answered. He was driving, and she was looking at her phone, and trying very, very hard not to give him the satisfaction of laughing at his admittedly hysterical timeline. He had an Instagram, he had a Tumblr, he had a Reddit account, he was all over the Internet, and she could tell which ones were really him easily enough. His face wasn’t clearly shown anywhere but his metal hand was, pretty clearly, in a few places, specifically giving the finger.

“I’m hedging my bets,” he said, setting the cruise control and settling back in his seat.

“Hedging your bets,” she said.

He shot her a glance, then looked back at the windshield. “It’s harder for a secret organization to make me disappear in this Internet age,” James said. “You can set up all kinds of virtual dead-man switches. You can make it very annoying to get erased. You can really easily make sure knowledge is distributed in a way it’s gonna be hard for someone to trace pre-emptively, and nearly impossible to eradicate entirely after the fact.”

“Hm,” she said.

“Everything I know is recorded in a couple different places,” James said. “And I have failsafes and so on. If I disappear suddenly, the entire world is gonna know who might have taken me, who probably did take me, and everyone I have dirt on. It’s all getting spilled.”

“I see,” she said cautiously.

“I’m not disappearing into a basement in Moscow again,” James said darkly. “With no one coming for me because they don’t know there’s anyone to come for.”

“I suppose I see your point,” she said. “But you should get an account verified.”

“I looked into it,” he said. “I really did. But they need government ID. And of course, I don’t have that. I’m also not eager to get anything set up under my, y’know. Birth name.”

“I guess I get that,” Natasha said. She considered it. “I might have some ideas,” she mused.

“Whether I can prove I’m who I say I am or not— there’s a whole bunch of conspiracy theorists,” James said, “and I got enough stuff to whip them up. There’ll be a good community of wackos who won’t be satisfied with anything less than my verifiable corpse if I disappear suddenly. And maybe none of them are anyone special, but there are so many of them and they’re so weird that you can’t predict them. That’s my backup.”

“If you’re goin’ down, you’re takin’ ‘em with you?” Natasha asked, mimicking his occasional accent.

“I don’t care about that,” James said, glaring at the rear-view mirror to no apparent purpose. “I just don’t want to disappear for years and re-emerge as a puppet again. I’ve spent enough years bolted to the walls of basements secure in the knowledge that nobody’s ever going to find me because nobody knows to look for me. I don’t relish the prospect of additional time like that. If I vanish, I want to make sure somebody looks for me, even if only to make sure I’m dead because they hate me.”

“I guess I see your point,” Natasha said.

“Good,” he said.

“But,” she added, and it caught at her chest and was hard to get out. “I-- I wouldn’t-- let that happen. To you. Either.”

He glanced over at her again, and his smile was shy and real. “I know,” he said.

  
  


“Fuck,” Steve said, groping hastily for a dishtowel to stop the spread of coffee across the counter. Tony opened his mouth, and Steve glowered at him. “If you even open your fuckin’ mouth right now, Stark—“

“You’ll what?” Tony asked. “What will you to do me, huh?”

“You don’t want to find out,” Steve said. It was a lame answer, but it made him remember back when he’d been allowed a personality of his own, and some of the truly horrible things he’d done to Bucky to get even for various transgressions.

Which only served to deepen his foul mood, but it was a good reminder, even if painful. Maybe he could come up with something diabolical to unleash on Tony at some point without risking team dynamics.

“Creative,” Tony said, nodding thoughtfully. “Well, about as creative as I’d expect from a man with no dark side.”

Wanda, hithertofore unnoticed at the table behind him, laughed sharply, then cut herself off. Tony turned to look at her. “What,” he said.

“I said nothing,” she said, airy and very deliberately careless.

“No, no,” Tony said, “that wasn’t a nothing laugh. You were laughing at Steve not having a dark side, and I know you’ve seen it. Spill, Spookypants.”

“Nicknames like that do not endear you to me,” Wanda said darkly over the edge of her coffee cup, but Steve could see she wasn’t really offended. “But come now, Stark, how long have you known Rogers? You sincerely believe he has no dark side?”

Tony squinted at her, then looked over at Steve, who made his expression as neutral as he could muster as he cleaned up the spilled coffee. It had, of course, been the last of the coffee, and he of course had to put a new pot on and wait for it, and while Stark’s machines were incredibly fast at making coffee, it still meant he had to stand here for this.

“The rest of us were all rattled as fuck from your little stunt,” Tony said, “and Steve came out of it fresh as a fuckin’ daisy. What conclusion am I gonna draw from that?”

Wanda sipped from her cup, tipping it back, then stuck the saucer over the mouth of the cup, swirled it, and set it upside down, still connected. She held it for a moment, watching the outside of the cup where nothing was visible, and then picked up the cup, and considered the resulting sludge on the saucer. Maybe, Steve reflected, that hadn’t been coffee she was drinking. Tea? It was a little coffee cup, the kind he never bothered with.

She poked idly at the mess on her saucer with a finger. “I think you have it backwards, Stark,” she said. “It is not that Rogers has no dark side. It is that he has nothing but a dark side. I could not show him anything he did not already know. The worst things he can imagine have happened already to him.” She looked up, and smiled at both of them, a tight sad little smile.

Steve set his jaw and looked down, wishing he’d just given up on the coffee and left before this. Tony was staring at him but he wasn’t going to return the look, not now.

“You’re telling me Captain America is all dark side,” Tony said.

“No,” Wanda said. She stood up and came over to rinse her cup and saucer in the sink. Belatedly Steve recognized Turkish coffee, and wondered why he hadn’t thought of that before. Of course this kitchen had equipment to make Turkish coffee.

“Then what the fuck did you mean by that?” Tony demanded.

She ignored Tony for a moment, looking up at Steve, who made himself meet her gaze. “There is nothing left to fear,” she said, and her voice was unexpectedly kind. “You have already lived through the worst, and it has broken you.”

“He hardly looks like a broken man,” Tony said, gesturing, but Steve looked at him then, and could see his doubt.

“Neither do I, I daresay,” Wanda said, “but once you have already lost everything, there is not a great deal you can hide from yourself, down in the dark corners of your soul.”

Tony blinked at her, blinked at Steve, and took a step back. “This is a damn disconcerting conversation,” he said.

“Well, Stark,” Wanda said, “you did ask for it.”

“You’re telling me,” Tony said, “she showed you your worst nightmare, and you were just sort of like meh because you’d already seen it.” He made an exaggerated unimpressed shrug, twisting his mouth in a caricature of jaded boredom.

“And what did she show you, Stark?” Steve asked, unable to keep his voice behind his teeth. “What, everyone you loved dead and everything you fought for come to nothing?”

Tony looked stricken, and Wanda touched Steve’s arm, threading her hand through the crook of his elbow. “Yes, actually,” she said. She stepped in closer to him, and she was small in a way Natasha never was, though they were much of a size— actually, she was taller than Natasha. “Rogers, my auguries in my coffee grounds suggested that you would like me to teach you to make coffee the way I like it, which this machine will not do. It takes a little longer but I believe it is worth the wait.”

Surprise at this kindness completely melted what anger he still had toward Stark, and he looked down at her. “Auguries,” he said. “Is that what that was?”

She glanced at Tony. “Yes,” she said, “it is customary to see what patterns your coffee grounds make, and derive meanings from them. It is just for fun, you know, not magic. It is a good way to find out what you want to come true. Even if you are not in the habit of hiding things from yourself, you can still surprise yourself.”

  
  


Steve wasn’t expecting it but he wasn’t surprised either when he came down to the lounge that night after a particularly gut-wrenching nightmare to find Wanda sitting there. She had a little red glow around her, little tendrils, and he realized it was so he’d notice her; she was trying not to startle him.

He still didn’t know her well, and he’d puzzled his way through all the documentation on her abilities but still wasn’t one hundred percent sure what it was she could do, but she’d been trying to be friendly with him, he could see that. She wasn’t slimy about it, like a lot of people were, and he was trying very hard to return the sentiment.

“You can hear that shit, can’t you,” he said, too exhausted to be particularly delicate about it. She raised her eyebrows at him, and he waved a hand around his head. “You know. Brain shit.”

“You do yell in your sleep,” she said, “but I have a lot of practice at politely declining to listen much.” She drew an aimless little pattern on the tabletop with her finger, and the wispy red glow dissipated behind her fingertip. “I was awake, though. I have nightmares too, Rogers. I’m not spying on you.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Steve said, leaning against the counter. His shirt was soaked through the back with sweat, and he should have changed, and he just hadn’t expected anyone else to be awake. He wiped his face with the less-sweaty front of his shirt, and then rubbed his eyes. “I’m too fucked-up right now not to sound like an asshole.”

“Today is the first time I’ve really heard you swear,” Wanda said. “I thought you disapproved of that stuff.”

Steve groaned. “Over comms,” he said. “I had it beat into me that I hadda keep it clean on the mike, okay. It was a different world. And habits like that get ingrained. It was my job to be the fuckin’ nanny. I grew up like three blocks from the Navy Yard, when I’m not on display I swear like a fuckin’ sailor.”

Wanda actually grinned, in what looked like real amusement and not sinister delight— wow, Steve had some shit to work through with that, she was right to pick up on hostility like that if he was assuming her facial expressions all had ulterior motives. “I had not expected to learn this,” she said.

“Well,” he said, “take it in payment for me bein’ a dick to you. I’m sorry about that too, I know you don’t need that from me.”

Wanda looked surprised. “Rogers,” she said, “you’ve been perfectly appropriate to me. I was a literal supervillain, you’re allowed to take some time to make your mind up to trust me. I’m making up my mind about myself as well, you’re hardly over the line.”

He considered her for a moment. “Well,” he said again. It took him a moment to make the words form, but he finally managed to say, rubbing the back of his neck self-consciously, “Thanks for standin’ up for me to Stark. He means well, I’m told, but he tends to really— fuck me up. And it’s really hard for me not to just bicker with him like we’re kids. So I really— I appreciate you steppin’ in.”

“Stark is a bully,” Wanda said. “I dislike him. I am resigned to being his ally, and of course I have no doubt of his allegiance and would protect him with my life, but I do not like him in conversation. Let others nurse his ego and correct him gently. I am not predisposed toward that kind of nurturing and I will not be doing his growing up for him.”

“His heart’s in the right place,” Steve said, “when it counts, but-- yeah, he’s a little hard to get along with sometimes.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Especially if you’re kinda-- if you’re feelin’ a little fragile about stuff, it’s hard to find the energy to deal with him too.”

“Yes,” Wanda said. She fidgeted again, little wisps of red trailing distractingly from her fingers. Maybe, Steve thought, it wasn’t that she was trying to be courteous; maybe it was actually difficult to keep the red stuff hidden, and she just wasn’t bothering now. She did look very, very tired.

“Does that hurt?” he asked.

She blinked at him, then looked back down at her hands. “Oh,” she said. “No.” And it disappeared, leaving her hands looking plain and unexceptional.

“You don’t have to hide it,” he said. “God, you don’t have to fake being normal for _my_ sake. Do what’s comfortable.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. Suddenly, a tracery of red sprang up all around her, with tendrils extending through most of the room. “I don’t think you want me quite this comfortable,” she said.

Steve stared around in fascination. Some of the tendrils passed very, very close to him, but he could see that they all bent away to leave a him-shaped space. Including one that circled much of his head, and moved as he did, always staying a couple of inches away. “Is this always here?” he asked.

She was nervous, he realized. She was giving him a challenging look, pretending to be amused, but she was genuinely letting him see something, here. “Usually,” she said.

“Is it distracting?” he asked, turning to see how the faint red glow kept its distance from him. “You must be used to it,” he answered himself. It went straight through some of the room’s objects, and skirted others. “It’s inside some things, but not everything-- how does it choose what it touches?”

“I don’t go inside sentient things,” Wanda said. “Not unless they threaten me, or ask me to.”

Steve took a second look. “The toaster is sentient?” he asked, alarmed.

This fuckin’ place.

“Close enough,” Wanda said. “I also don’t tend to go into surveillance equipment unless I have reasonable cause, which at the moment, I don’t.”

“What constitutes reasonable cause?” Steve asked, seeing where her-- red mist, whatever it was-- skirted each of what he knew were camera emplacements.

She shrugged. “If I want to,” she admitted. “I figure it’s information Stark has, so it’s information I can have. I just usually don’t want it.”

“Fair,” Steve said. He looked around the room. “It’s really kind of pretty, actually. Does it take a lot of energy to maintain all this?” He waved a hand, watching the delicate red tracery not quite touch his hand, even though it didn’t appear to move-- it just sort of blurred to let him pass, and dissolved away as he moved away, but then re-formed when he stopped moving.

Wanda gave him an almost startled little smile. “Nobody thinks it’s pretty,” she said. “Except-- well.” Her expression shuttered up a little. “You know.”

The brother, clearly. “I know,” Steve said. “I’m sorry to bring it up.”

“No,” she said, distressed, and it was more emotion than he was used to seeing from her. “No, for-- don’t be _sorry_ , I can’t _bear_ \-- nobody will mention him, it only makes it worse.” The red tendrils all pulled farther away from everything, and coiled in around her, and Steve watched, half his attention caught on them in fascination and half wanting to curl around the young woman in sympathy too.

“I never had a brother,” he said, after a moment. “But I-- I lost somebody.”

“Oh,” she said, her distress smoothing away. “Yes, I know.”

The tendrils blurred, moved back to their former places. Steve watched them, then looked at her. “How much do you know?” he asked.

She gestured, and an image appeared, coalescing out of the red stuff and forming shape first, then filling in color. It was Bucky’s face, animated, long hair pushed back out of his face, and he was raising his head, looking up from the telescopic sight of a rifle. “I have seen him,” she said.

Steve stared at the image, watched as Bucky frowned at nothing, then put his eye back to the scope. The image faded out, and he closed his mouth and tried to compose himself, realizing he’d been gaping at it. It was recent, it had to be-- the hair-- he looked-- he looked like himself-- that wasn’t his unhappy frown, it was his concentrating frown, with the downward pull of his eyebrows--

Steve sat down in the nearest chair. “He was the sniper,” Wanda said. “The other day, on that mission. I discovered him before he began firing, and I touched his mind to find out what his intentions were. I kept an eye on him through all of it.”

“Touched his mind,” Steve said, alarmed.

“To simply touch is not invasive,” Wanda said. “Here, I will touch yours. Do not be alarmed, I will show you what I find, and you will see, it is not very much.” She held up both hands, and one of the red tendrils drew back exaggeratedly, then leaned in, almost in appearance like a hand, and brushed against Steve’s forehead. He felt nothing.

“Was that it?” he asked, aware his eyes had crossed as he tried to focus on the tendril.

“Yes,” Wanda said, and spread her hands. A grid appeared, laid out before her like a large platter, and she filled it with images-- it was an odd doubling effect, and he realized she was showing him what he had been seeing of the room. There was her, there was the table, there was the chair. And there was an aura around her, that as he watched changed color. “I can see that you intend me no harm, from this; you are suspicious and alarmed, and distraught, but you would not harm me because of it, not without much more provocation. Beyond that, just from the surface of your mind, I can see-- it is hard to make it into something that would make sense to you, but see, this sheen of colors-- you are upset, you are tired, you are worn-down with grief, you are hungry, you are sharply cut with painful desire to speak with your-- not-brother.”

“You can see all that,” he said.

“It isn’t much,” she said. “A competent psychotherapist would know as much from having spoken to you as I have.” She raised an eyebrow. “Sometimes I get more that way.”

“How much could you see when you looked at Bucky?” Steve asked, and was immediately ashamed of asking it. A sheen of dark green washed across the grid, and he realized suddenly that she was still showing what she could see of him, and that right there was his feeling of shame.

The vision disappeared. “It’s all right,” Wanda said quietly. “Don’t you think I understand? Of course I understand.”

“He was dead,” Steve said, “and now he’s not dead and I can’t--” He stopped, and breathed for a moment. He closed his eyes, then, and said, “Are you still looking?”

“At your mind? No,” Wanda said. “I will if you want me to, but I generally don’t. A quick brush, no more.”

Steve rubbed his face. “Doesn’t that get exhausting?” he asked.

“That’s why I don’t,” she said. “That, and it’s tedious. People are mostly very concerned with predictable things. It is not nearly so much of a thrill as everyone assumes it would be.” He opened his eyes and looked at her, and she laughed. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s also unethical, but I don’t care so much about ethics. Pragmatism serves me better, and it winds up almost the same thing anyway.”

“I’m less of a moralist than people assume,” Steve admitted.

Wanda spread her hands again. “Your friend, your Bucky, he is all right,” she said, and conjured an image again, of Bucky looking up from something and smiling, pushing his hair back with one hand. “His mind was clear enough, free from any outside influence I could see. He watched Natasha, through his scope, but he looked for you a great deal. I watched him, because I could correlate you in his scope with agitation on his part, so I looked closer to be sure he did not intend you harm. And I saw, then, that it was the opposite. He was worried for you, anxious that you would be hurt, and wanted to protect you. And he wanted, very badly, to speak with you, but he also wanted, very badly, for you not to see him or know he was there. He was very conflicted over this.”

An image swam up, and Steve realized it was himself-- it was the view Bucky’d had of him, through his rifle scope, and it blurred and was different. Oh-- his outfit from during the war. It was a memory of Bucky’s, seeing him then through the scope. It blurred, and was recent again, and Steve was struck by how much older he looked now, how startlingly grim.

“I wish he knew he didn’t have to be,” Steve said quietly. “I wish he knew, I don’t care about any of it.”

“I can make sure he knows,” Wanda said.

Steve looked at her for a long moment, as the image between them blurred out and faded away. “I don’t want to interfere with him,” he said finally.

Wanda held his gaze a moment, eyelids heavy as she considered something, then shrugged. “The offer stands,” she said. “Do you want to know more, or do you consider my methods an invasion of privacy?”

Steve bit his lips as he thought that through. “Depends what it is,” he said.

“Information I got in a brush against someone else’s mind,” Wanda said. “Not your Bucky’s.”

“Natasha’s?” Steve asked.

Wanda inclined her head solemnly. “Then you know,” she said.

He nodded. “She texted me a couple of things,” he said. “I know he’s come to her for help more than once.”

“Natasha, I respect,” Wanda said, “and secrets are such currency to her that I would not spend them, but you know, she is capable of astonishing depths of emotion for someone so outwardly cool.”

“I did catch that,” Steve said.

“You, she cares for,” Wanda said. “Barton. Fury. To quantify a depth of emotion is difficult, but she has a very deep regard for Barnes, out of proportion to how short a time she has known him.”

“There’s rumors they had history,” Steve said. “They came from some of the same circumstances.”

“I can’t parse it,” Wanda said. “I’m not sure she knows what’s the truth.”

 

_____________________

 

“Hold up,” Natasha said from behind him, and Steve slowed his pace and turned back. She’d been standing by the door, texting or something, and she was dressed in civvies, skinny jeans and a cute blouse and a messenger bag. She looked like a college girl. Especially now she was letting her hair curl again.

He took a breath, steadying himself, and found suddenly that it was easy to smile at her. “Hey,” he said.

“You look like you were in a hurry,” she said, looking a little wary.

“No,” he admitted, shaking his head. “Just-- wanted to get out of there.”

She smiled at him, and held out her arm. “Walk with me? Come get a coffee?”

“People now drink so much goddamn coffee,” Steve groused good-naturedly, knowing it would amuse Natasha. “I don’t know how you all can get anything done what with how much time you gotta spend peeing.”

“Well,” she said, “the caffeine, it makes us faster.”

He rolled his eyes. “Faster doesn’t mean more efficient,” he said.

“Steve Rogers,” Natasha said, “you’re a gift to humanity.” She threaded her arm through his and tucked herself up against his side, and set off with him toward the river instead. “Let’s just take a walk.”

“So how are you?” he asked. Every single time she stood this close to him he noticed how short she was, all over again.

She tilted her head. “You know,” she said, sounding like she was just considering it, “pretty well, thanks.”

“Good,” he said, and he wanted to ask about Bucky but didn’t know how. Natasha glanced back over her shoulder, casual but calculating.

“I have something for you,” she said. “He was-- really insistent.”

“Huh,” Steve said. “I assume I know who you’re talking about.”

“Our mutual friend,” she said.

“We have a few of those,” Steve pointed out. She laughed.

“That’s true,” she said. “I mean Barnes.” They must be far enough away from any eavesdroppers, then. Down here by the river, there was a nice bike/walking path, and some benches, and she tugged him to sit on a bench. He dropped down next to her, stretching his legs out, and she pulled her shoulder bag into her lap.

“How is he?” Steve asked, doing his best not to sound frantic.

She shrugged. “He’s mostly okay,” she said. “And by that I mean, most of the time, you wouldn’t know anything out of the ordinary had ever happened to him. It’s kind of incredible. He’s… he’s _okay_. It’s unreal.”

“Really,” Steve said.

She nodded, and looked over at him. “When I-- came out of the Red Room,” she said, and it was an offering, awkward and truthful and spiky. “I wasn’t-- I wasn’t nearly so okay. Not at first. He’s--” She shrugged, shoulders pulled in tight. “He’s doing better than I did. I don’t know how he can be, but he is.”

“I, it seemed like he was,” Steve said.

She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a small paper bag, and handed it to Steve. He took it. It was light, firm, something in a box. He pulled it out.

A set of art pencils, the fancy modern mechanical kind. He’d seen them, in art stores, fleetingly, and hadn’t bothered buying them. He could draw with regular pencils, and did, and it was an old argument he’d had with Bucky, and he swallowed hard.

“There’s a note,” Natasha said. “I think.”

Still in the bag, there was a folded piece of paper, and he pulled it out. The handwriting was enough to make Steve feel like he’d been punched in the gut; the outside of the fold just said “Steve” in viscerally familiar block capitals.

He took a breath and opened it.

 

_I don’t know if you still draw. If you don’t, you should._

_We used to fight over this. I remember you used to break pencils all the time with the big paws you got now._

_These are supposed to be unbreakable._

_I can’t be there for you, Steve, and I can’t take care of you, and I can’t even be a decent fucking friend to you, so let me buy you a fucking pencil._

 

Scrawled under that, sharp like a hook under his ribs, was the ornately-looped J.B.B. monogram Bucky had always signed things with.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel silly for being complainy, and I'm grateful for everyone who reads, and especially for the expressions of support. But I'm not sorry for being a little whiny because I really have needed some support lately. <3 and thank you to everyone reading, and I hope this winds up worthwhile for everyone as much as me.


	6. He Wanna Lick The Icing Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This isn’t how I wanted to go,” the sole remaining conscious guard said, staring up at the barrel of James’s shotgun.  
> “You wanna talk to me about wantin’ things,” James growled, “you got a lotta fuckin’ gall."
> 
> Plus phone calls!

 

“What’s this place?” James asked as the lights flickered on. Natasha hadn’t seen him in a few days, but she’d been able to tell from his texts that he was local. She knew he had other hideouts, she’d sussed out a few of them, and she’d had her suspicions as to which one he was spending most of his time in when he wasn’t around her. She could even guess why; just as she wouldn’t visit her apartment when she was in the midst of an op that someone might follow her home from, surely he wouldn’t risk her nice apartment’s safety that way either.

But instead of hunting for his alternate bolthole, she’d just taken the direct approach, and had texted various of his known numbers until one texted back. She’d just asked him to check in, and he had. After another twelve hours or so she’d given up on not worrying about him, but instead of sending a needy girlfriendy message she’d just asked if he was free and hungry.

He’d written back, “working”, and she’d let that slide for a couple hours. Clearly he was okay, clearly he wasn’t up to anything he needed her help with, clearly he was keeping his distance for good reasons. But just as clearly, something in her wasn’t satisfied with that.

So she indulged it. “Lemme know when you’re free, then,” she’d written, which was a waste of bandwidth, clearly he must know she wanted to see him, but it was one more hook.

“Gimme 12 hrs to wind this up and sleep,” he’d written back, suddenly chattier, “and then I’m yours.” Which would put them square in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, too early for dinner, and she’d known exactly where to bring him.

She’d met him at a specific subway stop precisely 12 hours later, and told him to dress comfortably and bring workout gear. He’d shown up looking good enough to eat, damp hair in a messy half-assed man-bun, and well-fitting jeans and motorcycle boots, with a duffel bag and his arm camouflaged with the smart-mesh she’d gotten him.

She gestured around the studio space, at the barre and mirrored wall, and said, “What does it look like it is?”

He laughed. “Okay,” he said, “I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but it looks to me like a dance studio.”

“Take your shoes off,” she said, and shed her giant hoodie to reveal her leotard.

“Hot damn,” he said, lighting up, “you’re takin’ me dancin’.” He was so beautiful lit up like that, she had to look away so as not to be knocked back by it.

“I wanna see what you can do,” she said sweetly, unzipping her boots and pulling her wrap skirt out of her gym bag.

He could do a lot, it turned out. She’d been taught swing dancing, but it made a lot more sense the way he did it, and she could understand now what it had been before dance teachers had gotten their nostalgic mitts on it. He danced like it was a nightclub, like they weren’t steps so much as natural extensions of body language, like his feet knew where the ground was and didn’t worry how to get back to it.

She’d been taught modern dance, and hip-hop, and all the rest of it, but James had taught them to himself. And he was good. He clearly hadn’t studied any ballet; there were none of those influences in his posture or body language. He just knew how to move his body so it did what he wanted it to.

After a few numbers of messing around, he changed out of the jeans into running shorts, and stripped off the arm camouflage. “Does it overheat?” she asked, admiring the bright gleam of it as it shimmered into view. He stripped the inactive sleeve off, and the arm looked like liquid metal sliding over flesh. It was really striking, for all she saw it all the time. He’d stopped wearing long-sleeved tac gear because of overheating issues, which was why she’d requisitioned the mesh sleeve.

“Nah,” he said, “but it cuts down on the mobility of the plates and it gets uncomfortable.” He flexed the arm and all the plates shifted, whirring more loudly than usual. Some of them stayed stuck up instead of settling, and there was a distinct humming noise. He made a face. “Yeah, ok, a little overheated too.”

“I could see about a better one,” she said, concerned. If that thing malfunctioned she had no idea how to fix it. She’d been hunting, as had he, for blueprints of the thing, or at least some hints of how the fucking tech even worked, but there was nothing. It was like the arm had dropped out of the sky fully-formed.

But then, there was precious little information about the Winter Soldier in general, let alone that specific thing. Apart from the cryo technology, which was extremely well-documented, mostly by Stark Inc., and had big DO NOT USE ON HUMANS notes all over it. He appeared in there, James did, but never by name, just “enhanced human subject”.

He was the only success. Others had survived freezing, but not thawing. He was the only one.

“Nah,” he said, wiping his face with a hand towel. His shirt was stuck to his back, but he wasn’t tired, he just looked nicely warmed-up. “It’s fine, it’s just if nobody’s looking I’d rather have it bare.” He was wearing a t-shirt with both sleeves cut out, and it suited him better than that sort of thing normally suited people. Natasha was a little shocked to realize that she’d missed him. It had been days, and he’d been nearby the whole time. But she’d missed him.

“It looks pretty good bare,” she said, moved to honesty. “I never really thought about it, but the arm’s pretty stylish.” It was beautiful, was the thing, and it suited him; it looked both fluid and natural, and jarringly unnatural, and it gave him a whole extra edge of attractiveness.

Maybe it wouldn’t be a universal appeal, though; maybe Natasha had a little more prurient interest in people as weapons that made the arm give her a little frisson of attraction down in her belly.

He flexed it again, finally getting the last of the plates to settle. “Y’think?” he said, and it was his shyly-pleased expression again, and it made her want to touch him.

She’d made good progress, over the years, in letting herself understand why she wanted things, and letting herself have things she wanted if the reasons were good. Wanting to touch him wasn’t entirely bad, wasn’t inappropriate, even if she didn’t stand to gain anything in particular by it. So she stepped closer, and ran her fingers along the swell of the sculpted bicep muscle. “Yeah,” she said. “I mean, at least it’s not ugly.” It felt like liquid metal over skin, too, but not at all yielding. It was hard, but warm, and moved under her fingers.

“I kind of feel like I’d think it was if I thought about it,” he said. “But I have a kind of deal where I don’t think about it.”

“I think it looks hot,” she said. “At least it’s the same shape as your other arm.”

“I guess it didn’t have to be,” he said. “Some of my real arm is still in there though. So it was probably easier if they made it at least look symmetrical.”

Since he didn’t seem to mind, she ran her fingers over it more, enjoying how warm it was. Like a living limb, like a part of him. “I like that it’s so shiny,” she said. “They could have tried to make it blend in with your skin.”

“It woulda looked creepy,” he said. Something crossed his face, but disappeared, and he said, “I think they tried.”

“Ew,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, “ew,” and she knew exactly what he meant. It’s not like anything they’d ever done had ever had the slightest bit of regard for his comfort or preferences; if they’d gotten it in their heads to try to make his arm inconspicuous they’d’ve done whatever it took to make it work regardless of what it meant for him. She stood on her toes to thread her fingers around the back of his neck and tug him gently down to kiss him.

“Well,” she said, “I think we’ve killed any of them that were still alive, by now.”

He grinned at her, close-quarters, and his chest was a broad hot solid weight she hadn’t quite meant to plaster herself to. “Yeah,” he said, “livin’ well is the best revenge. I guess the arm’s not so bad. It’s kinda retro-futuristic. Kinda like me. I guess I couldn’t design a better-lookin’ one.”

She kissed him again. “I’m not the creative type,” she said. “I sure couldn’t. Maybe you could. I just know I like how you look, and the arm’s part of it.”

She pulled back, and he kept her hand in his right hand, the left one flexing absently as he considered it. “Well,” he said, “I’m glad you do, at least. I guess that makes me feel better about it.” He jerked his head. “What else you gonna make me dance to?”

“You dance a lot,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “Not at my place, but every time we’re on an op you’ve got a different dance you’re doing.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I was always into that. Somethin’ to think about.” He looked a little wary, like he was waiting for her to catch him at something.

“You must practice,” she said.

He shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “One of my other safehouses, there’s a lotta empty space. If I ain’t gonna sleep I look up music videos on YouTube and teach myself the dances.”

She grinned; she’d known it. “What are you learning right now?” she asked.

He laughed, eyes going a little indirect; he was embarrassed, she thought. He wouldn’t tell the whole truth, but he’d have a ready answer. “You want a list?”

 

It wasn’t as rigorous as Madame’s ballet sessions, but Natasha’s knees were a little shaky by the time they were done. They’d gone through a great list of classic music videos, most of which she’d seen, a couple of which she’d already learned the dances from, most of which she’d never have thought to. And he’d had a little playlist all cued up of great pop pas-de-deux dances, some of which she agreed would be perfect for them to perform together. “At least just for us,” he’d said.

“Or to fuck with people,” Natasha said. “I’m a big fan of fucking with people.”

“We can absolutely go to open mic night at the Y and do the dance from Dirty Dancing,” James said solemnly.

“With complete sincerity,” Natasha said. “That’s the crucial part.”

“Absolutely,” he said, and held his arms out for her to run at him to do the lift.

Natasha wanted to invert some of the dances, but she couldn’t lift James. She was stronger than she ought to be, for her height and build, but he was much, much heavier than he ought to be. The arm was definitely about five times as heavy as it looked, but even more than that, the rest of him seemed too heavy for his size. He was pretty sturdily-built, but not enough to warrant that; if he didn’t have a healing factor, she could tell he wouldn’t be able to handle the weight of that thing plus whatever else they’d done to him. She understood even better, then, why he’d looked a little conflicted when she’d complimented it.

She wasn’t sure she had any connections with anyone who’d know how to redesign an advanced prosthetic plus other mechanical or cybernetic enhancements-- besides Tony, who was absolutely not getting a call.

James was bent over his duffel with his water bottle, looking a little winded, and she came up and clapped her hands like Madame. “Chop chop chop! No loafing!” she shouted in Russian-accented French.

He laughed at her and stood up, wiping his face. He was pretty glorious, all told; not really the gleaming robotic appendage so much as the whole thing, the rest of him, the bright eyes and sweet face and strong jaw and all of it. He’d fixed his hair into a better-secured bun, and he looked young and strong and healthy and fucking delicious. “We payin’ by the hour?” he said. “We gotta get our money’s worth outta this place?”

“No,” Natasha said, “I get to use the place because I did a favor for the owner. I come here a lot.” She checked her watch, clipped to the handle of her gym bag. “We got another twenty minutes before the early birds for the next class are likely to show up. You wanna teach me anything else?”

“Nah,” he said, then with a mischievous glitter he said, “you look tired.”

She straightened up, cocking an eyebrow at him. “You think so?”

He looked as innocent as he could manage. “I just don’t want you to over-extend yourself, sweetheart.”

She laughed at how transparent he was. “There’s one style of dancing I haven’t seen today,” she said. “We should go over it.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

She pulled a chair over from the observation area, and set it down, pointing at it. He sat obediently. “Have you ever been to a modern strip club?”

“No,” he said, eyebrows drawing in with confusion. “The loud noises and close quarters and flashing lights seem like a bad idea.”

“Well,” she said. “It’s a cliche, but you do wind up in them sometimes.”

“Are you going to teach me to dance like a stripper,” James said, raising one eyebrow. “Are you going to make me go work undercover as a male stripper.”

“No,” she said. “Though. That would, ah. That would be hot.”

He laughed, tipping his head back and going lax in the chair. “Girl, I will learn how to give lap dances if you want one.”

“I can teach you,” she said sweetly.

“Maybe,” he said, “we should do this somewhere more private.”

She straddled his lap and sat down. “Maybe,” she said, “you’re right.”

He kissed her. “Should I come back to your place?” he asked.

She bit her lip. “I think I’d like that,” she said. And then, before she could talk herself out of it, she added, “Not just now, though. On general principle.”

He looked at her mouth, then at her eyes, and sucked on his lower lip. “Okay,” he said, and smiled shyly.

  
  


“This isn’t how I wanted to go,” the sole remaining conscious guard said, staring up at the barrel of James’s shotgun.

“You wanna talk to me about wantin’ things,” James growled, “you got a lotta fuckin’ gall.”

“Point,” Natasha said, gesturing with her pistol in a sort of shrug-like gesture, as if this were a spirited discussion over drinks and she was holding a glass instead. They weren’t planning to kill the guy, they needed him to squeal on the higher-ups, that was why they’d picked him-- they knew who he was, they’d stolen the org chart a couple of missions back. He was high enough up to know things, but low enough down to probably not be super dedicated.

“You’re doin’ okay now though,” the guard said, sounding shocked. Natasha realized he was addressing James, who looked anything but okay-- he was in more subdued tac gear, arm covered in the camouflage mesh sleeve to keep it from shining so much, hopefully without overheating, face streaked in camouflage paint more to confound facial recognition software than cut glare or genuinely hide him, but he was kind of wild-eyed and his jaw looked permanently clenched. He didn’t like this kind of rabbit-warren work, Natasha surmised, although he was terrifyingly effective at it.

“The fuck do you mean,” James gritted out through his clenched teeth. Natasha knew his teeth were all reinforced, and ever since she’d found out she’d been trying not to think about what that meant, in any of its ramifications. She had a suspicion it wasn’t just that they’d all gotten broken, but also that they’d augmented them-- like, there was tech in there. Sometimes when she was sweeping for bugs or scanning for energy signatures she wound up following a reading straight to James’s face. It was unsettling, especially his expression when he told her not to worry about it.

“That dancing video,” the guard said, and actually looked to Natasha for support. “I mean-- I figured-- it’s not like HYDRA conditioned that into you, I figured it was a good sign and you’d picked up your own interests and--”

James also looked to Natasha for support. “I know we didn’t want him dead,” he said, “but he doesn’t need his legs. Not both of ‘em. If I blow one off and shove it into his mouth?”

“If I video that,” Natasha said, “it might go viral too.”

“That’s what I meant,” the guard said, a shitload less terrified than he should’ve been. “I meant, I don’t want my mutilation to become a viral video on YouTube. I’d always figured it’d be my luck to go that way, but I’d kind of figured it’d be fireworks or the dumb shit we do in the barracks on weekends.”

Unexpectedly James laughed. “Like the mattress jousting?”

“You saw that?” the guard asked, eyes lighting up a little.

“Of course I fuckin’ saw that,” James said, disgusted. “The location was embedded in the video footage metadata, it was one of the ways we confirmed the location of this facility. You guys are dumb assholes. If I’d had more time I’d considered just booby-trapping the fuckin’ mattresses, savin’ myself some trouble. But I don’t have time and the point of this is that you know who did it, so I didn’t. For the record, though, if I blow your leg off, I’m doin’ you a fuckin’ favor.”

 

“After all that rehearsal,” Natasha said, looking up at the surveillance camera, “it’d be a shame not to.” Also there was a chance HYDRA might not know it was them who’d knocked the base over; James moved distinctively, but with his hair bound and his arm covered and most of the witnesses dead, they might not make a definitive ID.

James was dragging their bound captive along the floor and had been looking increasingly rock-jawed and robotic, but he paused and looked up, and clearly caught the gist of what she meant. “You think this guy deserves viral video stardom after all?” he asked.

The guy had a gag on, but his eyes went wide, and Natasha laughed at him.

“How long do we have?” she asked.

James glanced at his watch. He wore a watch sometimes, like a nonagenarian. Surely it would be so easy to build one into the cyborg arm; all of Natasha’s frustrated electronic engineering tendencies were twisted up in how fucking hot he looked with the arm exposed. “Probably like twenty minutes,” he said.

She hauled a chair over from against the wall, and set it square in the security camera’s field of view. “I was gonna steal their logs anyway,” she said.

“Oh are you-- for real?” James looked at the chair, looked at the captive, looked up at the camera.

“C’mon,” she said, drawing it out. “Be a sport.”

James hauled the captive up to look at his face. “I figured she wanted us to do the dance routine from Dirty Dancing,” he said. “I figured maybe that or like, the bit from Grease with the girl in the skinny pants, right?”

“I don’t want to be in this video,” Natasha said, “too many people know me. It’s just you and our friend.”

James sighed dramatically, and dumped the guy into the chair. “I think I know what she’s going for here,” he said. “I’ll give you a choice, though, buddy, because I don’t want to be that guy. You got two choices. Either I make a viral video out of blowing your leg off and feeding it to you, or--” He paused, and glanced over, and Natasha gleefully hit the play button on her phone to start up, tinny but recognizable, Rihanna’s [Birthday Cake](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_03U8zl5IE).

 _It’s not even my birthday_  
_but he wanna lick the icing off_  
_I know you want it in the worst way_  
_Can’t wait to blow my candles out_  
_He want that_  
_Cake cake cake cake cake cake cake_

James sighed, toggled the invisible switch that changed the mesh sleeve from looking like fabric to being invisible to show the gleam of his arm, and took the shotgun strap off over the top of his head. “Or a lap dance. It’s up to you. I just learned the modern technique. I been takin’ dance classes. What you think, guy? Shake your head no if you want me to blow your leg off instead.”

Natasha held her arm out, and when the guy emphatically did not choose to have his leg blown off, she took the shotgun with great glee, and went into the control room to steal the video feed as soon as it was recorded.

 

It wasn’t really a proper lap dance, James clearly didn’t want to get particularly close to the guy, but he did demonstrate that he had been practicing those isolations. Natasha knew instantly that it was going to give Fury fits, and he was going to love it.

 

After that healthy round of buttering-up, James held their captive by the shirt collar over a very steep cliff for long enough (and with enough scary robotic grinding noises and sickening almost-letting-go slips) to get him to wet his pants and tell them the approximate framework of what they wanted to know. Natasha called it in, then, to the subset of SHIELD she’d vetted for Fury, and left the guy heavily sedated in the back room of the local police station for the agents to pick up. (With any luck, the police wouldn’t know until the SHIELD agents showed up.)

They cleaned up in an unmanned rest stop’s bathroom, changed into civilian clothes, and then James drove while Natasha rested. She’d offered to drive, but despite his high-spirited dancing, she could tell he was still pretty on-edge. “You don’t like that kind of shit,” she observed.

He glanced over at her as he fiddled with the car’s Bluetooth connection, getting his phone paired for music. “What kind of shit,” he said, dropping the phone into the cup holder and putting the car into gear. “Hanging people off ledges?”

“That,” she said, “but mostly I meant, close-quarters combat like that.”

He made a face, and turned the volume on the stereo up a little, since it was mostly inaudible. Dancehall pop, modern recent stuff; he listened to a lot of it. “Yeah,” he said, “I do really hate that shit, but I’m good at it and it’s gotta get done.”

“You are good at it,” she said. He was still visibly on-edge, though, and she wondered if he was going to disappear on her once they were back to the city.

He got up to cruising speed, fifteen miles an hour over the limit, and set the cruise control. He was used to this car, and drove like an old hand. She knew he’d learned how to drive in an era of three-speed transmissions and unsynchronized clutches, but like many things, you’d never guess if he didn’t tell you. He was better at blending in than he had any right to be. She’d learned that, been trained in it, but for him it had to be an old skill, from before they took him.

She watched him for a while, using her phone in her hand as an excuse for her attention, and could see the tension failing utterly to leave his jaw and shoulders.

Eventually she dozed off, sleep rolling her under for far longer than she had intended, lulled by the sound of the wheels on the road and the thumping bass and the occasional tapping of James’s fingers on the steering wheel. She woke eventually to gray light, dawn coming up the sky in pale streaks, and James staring down the road with a face like stone.

She stretched, and checked their location on her phone, and yawned. The music had crept steadily quieter throughout the night, and had shifted over more towards R&B. “Hey,” she said sleepily.

James took a deep breath, stirring out of his unnatural stillness. “Hey,” he answered, and his expression softened as he glanced over toward her. “Made good time, we should hit the city before rush hour.”

“Oh good,” she said, and yawned. He glanced over at her again, and this time his mouth curved identifiably into a smile. “What?”

“Nothin’,” he said, looking back at the road. The tension of the previous night’s work was still settled in his shoulders, down at the corners of his eyes, but his mouth was softer now. She crossed her arms and tilted her head at him, and after a moment he laughed. “You’re cute when you wake up like that.”

“Don’t get sappy on me,” she said, but secretly she was pleased. It only took her an instant of warmth curling in her stomach to start second-guessing herself, of course-- why would she care for his regard, she knew she was attractive, that was the point; what did he intend by telling her this; why would she care what he thought of her, she didn’t need any additional leverage over him; surely he knew that; she’d just slept very deeply in a moving vehicle next to a visibly-upset unstable man she knew was among the most dangerous individuals in the world; she really had to pee.

The last one was enough to get her thoughts out of their spiral, and she made James stop at the next fast food restaurant so they could use the restroom, get breakfast, and switch drivers.

He plowed through four breakfast sandwiches and six sides, and the biggest cup of coffee Natasha had ever seen. She herself was hungry enough for three sandwiches and two sides, so she wasn’t about to judge him. He looked a little less hollow-eyed, but no happier.

“Did you pull a muscle?” she asked finally, after observing him for a little while.

He shrugged, the non-metal shoulder, and kind of grunted around his last sandwich. She stared at him, and eventually he swallowed the last of the sandwich, washed it down with yet more of the coffee, and glared at her. “No,” he said.

“You hurt yourself, though,” she said.

“You’re not exactly walkin’ smoothly after all that runnin’ around followed up by six hours in a car,” he said.

“No,” she said, “and I wouldn’t deny it if asked.”

He gave her an unamused look. “I’m not lying,” he said. It was incredible that he had such good resistance to interrogation, because she didn’t even dial up her inspection of him before he broke. “It’s not a pulled muscle, it’s a muscle spasm, that’s different.”

“Where?” she asked, holding out her hands.

He clutched the coffee protectively to his chest. “Don’t touch me,” he said. “Not here.” But he didn’t look as upset as he might have.

“Fine,” she said. “But let me drive the rest of the way.” She ran through a series of stretches in the parking lot, while he stood cradling his coffee like a precious thing and watching her with what she was not imagining was a shade of interest. “Good scenery?” she asked.

“I worry,” he said, “that your hamstrings might still be tight. You should probably stretch those again to make sure.” He gestured. “Face that way, though, the light’s better.”

She laughed at him, reassured, and got into the car. Most of his upper back seemed to be in spasm, she judged from how stiffly he moved. Just because he was strong enough to hold a gibbering villain over the edge of a cliff with that metal arm didn’t mean he ought to.

She’d keep that in mind.

Of course, that much coffee meant he was very uncomfortable by the time they got back to her apartment. Enough so that she decided to forgo most of the evasive maneuvers she habitually took, and just drove straight to the lot she parked in two blocks from the apartment.

“Go, go go,” she said, laughing, and sent him with just the small knapsack, opting to carry the heavier duffel herself for the sake of expedience. He made a token protest, but then took off at a pretty good clip. “That’s what a bathtub of coffee gets you,” she said, mostly to herself, and followed him more sedately.

When she got into the apartment he was lying on the kitchen floor with the damned cat on his chest. She laughed and stepped over him, putting the duffel into the laundry nook where she also kept the heavy weapons. He had the metal arm out at his side, unmoving, but was using the other one fluidly enough to pet the (purring, upside-down) cat.

“I’m hitting the shower,” she said. He just grunted in response. By the time she came out, he had managed to strip off his boots and start a load of laundry, and was sitting shirtless in his underwear next to the washing machine with the cat in his lap and a beer in his hand.

“You’re really hurting,” she observed.

“Be better if I just got stabbed,” he said, teeth gritted. He was holding the metal arm against his body, so it supported none of its own weight. “That heals. This only compounds itself.”

“C’mon,” she said, “shower, hot water should help.”

“Yeah,” he said tightly, and climbed to his feet, depositing the complaining cat on the floor.

The hot water didn’t seem to do much at all, so she laid him out naked on a towel on the living room floor and worked on him with her hands and her elbows, trying to get the muscles to unlock. She’d never particularly studied massage, but had picked up a few things here and there. Somehow, for him, her hands just knew what to do. It still took a while, but she felt the moment when her pressure successfully unlocked the muscle that had started the cascade. One by one the muscles of his back unlocked, and his spine loosened like a zipper, and he made the most affecting little gasping noise of relief, his whole body twitching. She kept working at him a little longer, feeling his muscles go pliant under her hands, and all the plates of his arm shifted at once to recalibrate with an unusually loud whirring noise.

He moaned, quietly, at that, and then made no sound, and she eventually sat back on her heels and caressed the small of his back. “Better?”

“Nnngh,” he said. She touched his hand, and pulled back in surprise at how cold it was. He wasn’t in torpor, was he? She took his pulse, and he made another noise at her. His pulse was slow, but within normal. He was just cold. Which made sense, because he wasn’t wearing enough clothing.

She brought him out a pile of clothes, underwear and thick socks and sweatpants and two t-shirts and a sweatshirt. It took him a few moments to drag himself upright, and his arm recalibrated noisily again as he did so.

“Do you control that?” she asked.

He looked blank, then looked down at his arm, following her gesture. “Yes,” he said. “Well. No. I can kind of. Suppress it. Sometimes I try to keep it quiet. But I’m not making that noise on purpose, if that’s what you’re asking.” He was clumsy, uncoordinated, and fragile-looking, and she helped him dress and pulled him over to sit on the couch. “You’re too good to me,” he told her.

“It’s only as much as you’ve done for me,” she said. Which was true.

He smiled a little, at that, and burrowed himself deeper into the hooded sweatshirt, pulling it up to cover his wet hair. “I think you’ve done more for me than I for you,” he said.

She leaned over and kissed the side of his head, having to delve somewhat into the hood to do so. “I’m not keeping score,” she said. “I don’t need to, do I?”

He laughed, and turned his head to catch her mouth, and kissed her sweetly. “No,” he said, “you don’t, I guess.”

 

_________________________________________

  


The phone rang, and Lakeisha waited patiently; she just needed the voicemail to pick up so she could confirm the connection. There was a click after two rings, the auto-recorder started up, and a gruff male voice said, “Rogers.”

She blinked in shock. “Uh,” she said. “I uh.”

“Wrong number, huh?” he said.

She remembered to click to confirm the connection, and said, “No, I just-- I expected you’d have voicemail or-- or screening or something-- I was just--”

“Well,” Rogers said, and his voice was recognizable even though he sounded a lot different than he did on TV, and Lakeisha breathed steadily to try to calm herself, “I don’t, so if you had a message or somethin’, you can just tell me now.”

“I,” Lakeisha said. She really didn’t want to say, I was just trying to confirm that this number is connected. “I’m sorry, I’m so flustered-- I just-- I figured it was an answering service, or-- why you pickin’ up your phone in the middle of the night when random numbers call you outta the blue, man, don’t you know how Caller ID works or did they not teach you that yet?”

He laughed, Captain fuckin’ America laughed at her joke, holy shit. “Thing is,” he said, “I got a couple friends who lose their phones a lot, and some of ‘em can’t answer a call back, so I’ve learned the occasional rude prankster is worth dealing with just in case it’s one of them.”

He sounded so tired, so beat down, and her heart caught in her throat and said, “Oh man, I never thought of that.”

“Well, I did,” he said. “And I don’t give out this number, but sometimes it gets passed around and somebody finds it, so-- I can’t change it either, if I want to ever get calls from those people.”

“Is it,” she started to say, then swallowed it down. “You’re talking about Bucky. Bucky calls this number.”

Cap was quiet a moment. “You know I’m not going to confirm that,” he said.

She realized what she’d said, and clapped her hand over her mouth with a gasp. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud,” she said. “Jesus Christ, oh my God, I’m an asshole. I’m sorry. No. You know what, Cap, the deal is, I’m a hacker, and I was just trying to verify that the number is good, for probably nefarious purposes, so what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna go back and post that it’s no good. And that’s not gonna stop idiots from callin’ but at least the people that had me lookin’ it up for them won’t use it.”

He laughed softly. “You don’t gotta protect me. If it means they ain’t payin’ you for the job, you do what you gotta do. It’s a drop in the asshole bucket.”

“No,” she said, “people are dicks to you enough, I’m not gonna help ‘em pile on.”

“I’d appreciate that,” he said tiredly. “It’d be a nice change.”

She was struck with a sudden realization, given the timbre of his voice and a constellation of soft noises that suggested he’d rolled over in bed, and said, “Oh holy shit, I woke you up. Oh I’m goin’ to hell for sure.”

He laughed again at that, a short sharp burst that sounded startled out of him. “If I could send people straight to hell, you know, that’d be a weird superpower to have,” he said, and his amusement really sounded genuine.

“I thought that was it, though,” Lakeisha said laughing. “I thought that was what you did. Oh, I’m so sorry I woke you up! Oh, this is the worst hacking job I’ve ever done!”

“If this is the worst thing you’ve ever done,” Cap said, “then you’re doin’ better than a lot of people.”

 

_________

 

Natasha came into the bedroom and flinched in startlement; James was standing at the nightstand, looking down at something. She hadn’t known he was in the apartment; he hadn’t been, for two days. He looked over at her in alarm, then looked back down when he saw it was just her.

It was the drawing Steve had done of her in the last briefing. He’d slid it into her folder, and she’d laughed to see it. She wasn’t sure where she’d left it. James was staring at it like he’d never seen anything like it.

“Steve used your pencils,” she said. “I told you he was excited to get them.”

James picked up the drawing in both hands, gently, and turned to sit on the bed. “He used to draw me like this all the time,” he said, soft and only half-voiced. Natasha realized that his eyes had gone flat and liquid. She looked down at the drawing. It was good, really good-- not just a faithful rendition of her facial proportions, it was a good portrait, capturing the quirk of amusement in her eyebrows as she watched someone make an ass of themselves in the meeting they’d both been sitting in. It was the kind of thing that showed how drawings could be superior to photographs, as he’d distilled her expression into a good representation of her normal affect, instead of catching a fleeting twitch of facial muscles.

It wasn’t the most polished drawing; it was loose and sketchy, not cleaned up, still showing traces of the orientation markers Steve had used to block out the rough planes of her face. But it sparkled with life nonetheless, and she quite liked it.

“I bet he did,” she said.

James bit his lip. “He drew my family like this,” he said. “I mean, he was always drawing. Everybody. I had--” He looked away. “A picture of. My-- my mom.” His voice shook, and he stopped talking. She could see enough of his profile to tell that he was chewing on his lower lip, and he swallowed, hard, then took a shaky breath.

After a moment he handed the drawing back to her. “Get that framed,” he said, “it’s probably worth money, right?”

She laughed. “It probably is,” she said, “but I’d never sell it. Nobody’s ever drawn me before.”

He blinked at her. “Didn’t that one painter do a study of you?” His gaze went distant, considering. “He painted a couple of the girls. Fancied himself a new Degas.”

She shook her head, and a chill slowly crept down her spine. Primarily, because of this further evidence of the mythical Natalia that was who he was really in love with… but secondarily, because she could see a painting in her mind, three girls in ballet gear, one standing, one in a chair, one sitting in front of them, all staring with disconcerting blankness out of the canvas. “I don’t remember,” she said, instead of _that wasn’t me_ , because the first one was more accurate.

James half-smiled, glancing over at her, and she watched as the same confusion arrested his motion and hitched through his expression. _Was it me? Was it real? Did it happen?_

“Sometimes,” James said, looking down and away, “outliving them all really isn’t much of a consolation,” and he stood and went out and down the hallway.

Natasha pulled out her phone. _yr drawing made james cry,_ she wrote to Steve, _you did a picture of his mom like that and it’s gone now._

She dragged herself to her feet and went out into the living room. James was in the kitchen, putting dishes away. He was a much tidier housekeeper than she was. She felt that dry dishes were best put away immediately before washing new ones. He felt they should be dried and put away immediately.

“James,” she said.

He stepped backward out of the kitchen and tipped his head to look at her, and his posture was so charming she almost forgot for a moment what she’d meant to tell him.

“Uh,” she said, collecting herself. “Good call on the pencils. Steve said he’d never have thought to get that kind of thing for himself.”

James grinned. “I read a lot of art blogs,” he said.

“Can you draw?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not really,” he said. “I took art class like everybody, but I never really had any aptitude for it.”

She wanted to ask him about the painter, about the girls, about the ballet. How much of what she remembered had really been her? How much was true and how much was imagined? Was she making it all up by the power of suggestion, of what he expected her to remember? But she didn’t have any words to ask any of that, so instead she said, “That’s too bad.”

“Woman,” he said, pretending exasperation, “I can sing, I can dance, I can make a kill shot at two thousand yards, I keep a clean house, I can even cook, and you’re sad because I can’t draw?”

“I just want it all,” she said, not doing a very good job of not smiling at him.

“You don’t got it all,” he said, hands on his hips, and she walked closer until she was almost touching him, tilting her head back to look up into his face. “You just got me.”

She gazed up at him, eyebrows raised, watching as it sank in behind his expression that that was the kind of romantic declaration they didn’t make. His eyebrows quirked, and he half-smiled wryly. “Do I?” she asked, unexpectedly vulnerable.

“You do,” he said, and lowered his head to kiss her.

  


Steve handed Natasha a folder, and she by habit waited until no one was watching them to flip it open. But it wasn’t a dossier or a letter or a briefing. It was a drawing, on about a half-sheet of typing paper.

It was a woman she’d never seen before. A drawing, Steve’s style. The woman looked fond, a little tired, good-natured, a middle-aged woman with laugh lines. It took her another moment to place the features-- something about the eyes and mouth. A relative of James, surely: mother? Mother. “Oh,” she said.

Steve glanced over at her, and smiled. “Mary,” he said quietly. “Her name was Mary.”

“Is this-- from memory?” She looked over at him in astonishment.

He shook his head. “Mostly, but-- I found the original drawing I did. It’s-- it was photographed for a catalogue, but the original is still with the family. I referenced the photo and made another copy.” He smiled. “It’s the second copy I made. The first copy, I drew it small so he could take it with him to Basic.” The smile disappeared. “I think he carried it through the whole war.”

“I,” Natasha said, and handed the folder back to Steve. “You should give it to him yourself. It’s-- that’s really heavy, Steve, I don’t know anything about mothers.”

He smiled sadly. “No,” he said, “you might as well take it. I don’t know when I’ll see him.”

She held the folder and looked up at him. “Soon,” she said. He smiled and shrugged, but it only strengthened her certainty. “Soon, Steve.” She wasn’t promising anything, she just knew; James wouldn’t be able to resist this.

 

____________________

 

The phone rang, and Steve checked it under the table. It was an unknown area code with the caller ID blocked, but the advanced tracking program he’d gotten loaded on it after that one really upsetting voicemail flagged it as probably being local and being a private number of the specific type he was looking for.

He excused himself quickly, ducked into the hall, and picked up, stomach knotted up. “Rogers,” he said.

There was a moment, an endless moment, and it was totally going to be some dumbass jerk kid, and Steve was going to get angry. And then someone let out a breath and said, “Roger that,” hoarse and amused, and Steve’s knees gave out and he caught himself against the wall and slid to the floor, right there in the hallway.

“Hey,” he said.

“Figured you wouldn’t pick up,” Bucky said. “I was gonna give you a number to call me back this time.”

“I always pick up this phone now,” Steve said.

“Aw you don’t gotta,” Bucky said. “You probably get all kindsa wrong numbers.”

“I do,” Steve said. “But I have a program that manages to catch most of the numbers I know I don’t want, so it cuts down on it.”

“Good,” Bucky said, and Steve could hear him smiling. “I can’t-- I can’t always leave a number, you know?”

“Where are you now?” Steve asked. “Are you okay? I’ve looked everywhere, I’ve been worried sick.”

“I’m fine,” Bucky said. “Jeez. Now you know what it’s like to worry, huh? You know you don’t gotta.”

“No,” Steve said, “I don’t know that. I have pretty good evidence suggesting I do gotta worry about you.”

“Eh,” Bucky said. “It’s okay. I just-- you gotta take care of yourself, Steve. Please take better care of yourself. I promise I’ll do the same if only you’ll just take better care of yourself.”

“I take perfectly good care of myself,” Steve said, indignant. The door opened and Maria Hill poked her head out, looking for him; she did a double-take when she saw him sitting on the floor. He held up a finger. “Hang on a sec,” he said to Bucky. “I gotta take this, Hill,” he said. “I’ll be back in a bit. I said my piece, you can go on without me.”

“‘m I interruptin’ somethin’?” Bucky asked.

“It’s fine,” Steve said, and pushed to his feet. Hill frowned, but pulled her head back inside and shut the door behind himself. Steve walked off down the hall to find an empty room. “Boring stupid meeting full of boring stupid people.”

“Did you at least wait until you were outta earshot?” Bucky asked, sounding pained.

“I’m a lot better at that kinda thing than I used to be,” Steve said, wry. “Y’know, now that my hearing’s good. I have a lot more of an idea of what it’s reasonable to expect people to hear.”

“I was gonna say, you couldn’t ‘a grown any sense,” Bucky said. Steve laughed to himself, just loud enough for Bucky to hear, and went into an empty office and shut the door.

“You’re staying with Natasha, right?” he asked, all in a rush before he could talk himself out of it. It would be easier to talk of nothing important, to pretend he didn’t know anything, but he couldn’t afford easy. He had to know, had to resolve things.

Bucky hesitated a moment. “Sometimes,” he said. “It-- Stevie, it ain’t like that. She’s great and we get along great but I can’t-- neither of us is a normal person. We don’t just… live like that. She’s away half the time, I’m away half the rest of the time.”

“I’m not jealous,” Steve said, “I’m glad. She’s probably the only person who could understand, y’know?”

Bucky breathed out. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s about it, really.”

“She’s,” Steve said. “She’s a really good friend to me.”

“Aw shit,” Bucky said, dismayed, “did I-- you weren’t tryin’ to make time with her, were you? Did I fuck that up?”

Steve laughed then, a real laugh, long and genuine and incredibly refreshing. “No,” he said, “no-- oh man. No, Buck. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a beautiful woman, and probably one of the people I love most in this world, but you know me. I’m a disaster with women. It never crossed my mind to make a serious attempt on her because I couldn’t bear to screw things up-- she’s such a good friend to me, she’s the reason I’m even alive half a dozen times over.”

Bucky’s voice was softer, amused but sweet. “I think she feels the same way about you,” he said.

“I’m glad,” Steve said. “I just-- she’s so good, y’know? At almost everything. And she’s so funny.”

“You don’t gotta tell me,” Bucky said. “I don’t think I could be any luckier, than to have her decide to help me like she did. I don’t think I’d’a made it.”

“Especially not since you wouldn’t come to me for help,” Steve said crossly.

“Oh man,” Bucky said. “You know I couldn’t! You know I can’t!”

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you,” Steve said.

“And that’s the problem!” Bucky said. “Jeez, Rogers, you got shit to do, important shit, and if you drop all that to do whatever the fuck you think I need outta you, people are gonna die. Romanoff likes me fine but she’s not gonna, I dunno, do anything real stupid over me.”

“You know,” Steve said, wounded but too worn-down to really take offense, “you’d think my oldest friend in the world would have a little more faith in me than that.”

There was a pause. “I do,” Bucky said. “Christ, Stevie, I _do_. And that’s the problem! I got so much faith in you-- I got way too much faith in you and it makes me not be at my best. And at this point I don’t got enough slack with the world to get away with that. I gotta be at my best as much as I can. I don’t got time to fall apart over you, which is what I’ll do, no question.”

“I wish I could see you,” Steve said. “I wish we could-- meet up. I miss you, Buck, I miss the hell outta you.”

“I miss you too,” Bucky said. “I, maybe next time I’m in town, I just-- I really don’t know, Stevie, I really don’t.”

“I’m not gonna push it,” Steve said. “I just-- I need to see you, buddy, I miss you so much it’s like a hole in my chest.”

“Don’t even think I don’t feel the same,” Bucky said. “I just-- I got a lotta holes in me, Steve, and fuck knows what’s lurking in most of ‘em because I sure don’t.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Steve said. “It doesn’t matter what’s lurking. You’re still you and I’m still me, enough that it counts, y’know?”

“Of course it counts,” Bucky said. “God. You think-- you know it hurts me to stay away from you. It gnaws at me, Stevie, worryin’ about you. But I’m more scared of what I could do--” Steve started to say something, but Bucky kept talking, plowed right over him. “Tell me, Stevie, tell me you got somebody lookin’ after you.”

“I’m a grown man,” Steve said, grumbling to cover up the way the question stabbed him in the chest.

“An’ you were a grown man before, Steve, an’ that didn’t stop you from doing hardly any of the stupid shit you thought up,” Bucky said. “I’m not mad, I was never mad, you’re you and that’s great an’ all, but if you weren’t flinging yourself headfirst into somethin’ you wouldn’t be you. And the world would be poorer for it. But you gotta-- there’s gotta be someone pickin’ up afterward. You need-- you need a support team.”

“I have a support team,” Steve said.

“I don’t mean Captain America’s support team,” Bucky said. “I mean Steve Rogers. I seen you, I seen how you do the voice and you do the jaw and you put the Gs on the endsa' alla your words and don’t drop no Rs nowhere. I noticed that’s how you always talk now. Natasha makes fun of my accent, but she ain’t noticed yet that you got it too because you don’t. You ain’t Steve most of the time, you’re Cap, an’ that’s not you. It ain’t healthy.”

“Our accent was never that strong,” Steve protested.

“For Natasha to notice? That don’t gotta be strong,” Bucky pointed out. “She knows you pretty good, but she knows you as Cap, Steve. That’s a bad sign. Ain’t there anybody anywhere who knows you as Steve?”

Steve considered that for a long moment. “Mostly just you,” he said.

Bucky didn’t say anything. Steve considered it a little longer.

“Sam sometimes,” he said. “I’m Steve to Sam sometimes. He thinks it’s funny. He knows the difference.”

“Sam who,” Bucky said, and Steve could almost see him, head cocked, ready to take mental notes.

Steve laughed. “You know Sam who,” he said, “the guy followed you halfway around the world.”

“The black fella with the wings?” Bucky asked. He considered that. “Oh yeah, his name was Sam. I looked him up. That’s-- I guess he’d be pretty close to you, if you trusted him with lookin’ for me.”

“Most important thing in the world to me,” Steve said, “but if I did it, I’d attract too much attention.”

“Because a flying man wasn’t in any way ostentatious,” Bucky marveled. “I mean, I know it’s 2015, but people don’t fly.”

“You’re horrible,” Steve said.

“I’m a fuckin’ supervillain,” Bucky shot back, “of course I’m horrible.” He laughed. “That guy was pretty good, I’ll admit. Good sense of humor. Great reflexes. Decent cornering.”

“He’s a pretty top-shelf human,” Steve said. “As humans go.”

“Hot, too,” Bucky said. “Good smile, _great_ ass.”

Steve barked out a startled laugh, then said primly, “I’m sure I hadn’t noticed.”

“Course you did,” Bucky said, “it’s a really great ass. I mean, like, big, and round, and just pure muscle. How can you not stare at that all the damn time, let alone _notice_?”

“I swear I did not,” Steve said, completely untruthfully.

“You’re blushin’, Steve,” Bucky said.

“I am not,” Steve said. He was.

“It’s 2015,” Bucky said. “You could just straight-up date him. In public. It’s cool that he’s a man. It’s even cool that he’s a black man. The tiny amount of bullshit you’d get for it would be nothing compared to the sublime glory of that ass.”

“I’m not going to date my co-worker,” Steve said. “I’m not-- that’s not how it is.”

“Oh please,” Bucky said. “Oh _please_. Forget the ass, I know how you feel about a sense of humor like that. He’s even funnier than I was, back when I was human and funny. Why are you not datin’ him?”

“You only ever thought you were funny,” Steve pointed out.

“I was a fuckin’ gift,” Bucky said. “And I taught you everything you know about kissin’, and--”

“That’s not true at all,” Steve interrupted. “That’s just a lie.”

Bucky continued, unperturbed, “I didn’t teach you all those valuable life lessons for you to squander on not kissin' a great smile like that. Especially not when it’s part of a package deal that includes a truly spectacular ass. I’m ashamed of you, Steve, I’m ashamed _for_ you, lettin’ that ass walk away from you like this-- where is he, anyway? I lost track of him.”

“He’s working,” Steve said, a little huffy at having been so easily read. God it was such a long time since anyone had bothered to read him. God..

“Oh my God you just Capped me,” Bucky said. “Steve! WorkinG, he’s workinG, you sound like a newsreel guy. You gonna give me the war bonds schpiel?”

“Waaah bonds,” Steve said, mocking his pronunciation, “waaahh bonds, you happy now? You sound like a cartoon, Bucky, we never talked like that! What, did you sit down and watch old-timey movies to try to jog your memory to bring your accent back?”

As he said it, Steve thought maybe he shouldn’t, but as so often happened his mouth kept moving, and the sentence came out, and he had an instant of horrified shock where he thought maybe he’d hit way too true.

And there was a pause, and a silence. “You didn’t, did you?” Steve said finally, quietly.

Bucky whooped with laughter. “Did I get you?” he asked. “Did I get you?”

“Oh, you fucker,” Steve said, only it came out too loud and with a really broad not-really-R at the end, and it was totally unintentional, and it made Bucky whoop even more.

“You fuckahhh,” Bucky gasped, wheezing with laughter, “aaahhhh you fuckahhh,” and Steve started laughing too.

“Ahhh,” he said back, “you fuckaahhh,” laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe, and of course it was at that moment that Maria Hill opened the door and stood there staring at him, and he couldn’t stop laughing. “Aw shit,” he said, “aw shit.”

“You fuckahhhh,” Bucky howled.

“Stop,” Steve said, “stop it, you fuckin’ asshole,” and he was laughing so hard he was crying.

“You fuckaahhh!” Bucky yelled.

“Cap,” Maria said, “I-- who is shrieking at you on the phone?”

“Some fuckaah,” Steve managed, wheezing with laughter.

“Is that your boss?” Bucky asked. He started yelling. “Hey lady! Ask Steve why he ain’t datin’ Sam!”

“Shh,” Steve said, “shh, Jesus, stop it.”

“Steve needs to get laid,” Bucky yelled.

“It was bad enough when I was Natasha’s project, don’t you start,” Steve said, managing to get his breathing more under control. That kind of laughing would absolutely have given him an asthma attack once upon a time. It had always chastened Bucky, but had never stopped him the next time.

“Steve your dick has cobwebs on it,” Bucky shouted.

“I’m gonna hang up on ya,” Steve said. “Why would ya make me do that? I’ve been dyin’ to hear from ya and here you go makin’ me hang up on ya.” He glanced up. “Didja need me for somethin’, or were ya just comin’ to see why I was yellin’ obscenities in a conference room?”

“Just the latter,” Maria said. “I assume it’s not a blackmail threat though.”

“Nah,” Steve said, “not yet it’s not. I’m okay, Hill.”

“No he’s not,” Bucky yelled. “He’s a fuckahh!”

“I’ll just remind you that we do need your input on the conclusions from this meeting,” Hill said, unperturbed, “and leave you to your weirdly accented cussing.”

“Thank you, Hill,” Steve said.

She paused, hand on the door, and said, “I’d never heard you actually sound like you were from New York before.”

“Ya never been in a cab with me,” Steve said. She raised both eyebrows, in more of a smile than he normally saw from her, and pulled the door shut.

That was going to be a mess, possibly; there was no way she hadn’t guessed who was on the phone with him, and she wasn’t going to let go of it. But, Steve realized, she was one of the few people he trusted, and maybe it was okay that she knew. That bore thinking about.

“She sounded hot,” Bucky said. “I’m gonna look her up.”

“Isn’t your dance card full?” Steve asked.

“Not for me, dumbass,” Bucky said, “for you.”

“I thought I was supposed to be goin’ after Sam?” Steve asked.

“With a dry spell like you’ve had,” Bucky said, “it can’t hurt to line up a couple possibles. You’re kind of a disaster, Stevie.”

“I am,” Steve said. “That I am.”

“God,” Bucky said, “you’re my disaster though,” and it sounded so wistful.

“Gimme your number,” Steve said.

“The number I’m callin’ from,” Bucky said. “Genius.” He laughed. “It’ll work for a while yet. And when it stops workin’, I’ll call you with the new one.”

“Promise?” Steve asked, voice suddenly thick.

“Promise,” Bucky answered, and he sounded abruptly suspiciously congested as well.

 


	7. Suspicious Minds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No,” James said. He really did look upset. “Just-- Bucky was one of my big heroes when I was a kid, y’know?” He glanced over at her. “Army and all. Meant a lot to me. I really didn’t want it to be true.”  
>  “That poor guy,” Lakeisha said. “So he was this big war hero and like pioneered the entire concept of the Special Forces and did all kinds of insanely brave shit and actually got himself killed, and bad guys resurrected him and used him as a goddamn meat puppet for their nefarious bidding for like a goddamn century, and then he managed to sheer-force-of-will himself out of that and you’re disappointed. Disappointed? I tell you what if that disappoints you, you weren’t a Bucky Barnes fan in the first place.” She stood up. “Man I gotta get back to work but I want you to go home and think about how you’ve wronged Bucky Barnes in your heart. I won’t stand for that kind of thing.”
> 
>  
> 
> Natasha gets shot, Steve gets caught texting at work, Sam is in this story, Bucky learns valuable lessons about bleeding on the floor, the Winter Soldier gets a blog, a teenage hacker starts a Black Widow expose, and Lakeisha reveals herself as Bucky Barnes's number one fan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHO FORGETS ABOUT SAM  
> i forgot about Sam  
> I mean, not forgot-forgot, but just, totally omitted him. :( :( :( (I worked in a mention last chapter at least, but before that I'd just... not.)  
> I fixed that now. I realized because I went to write a much later scene with him in it and was like, wait, what's his position on all this been all along?   
> And I do have a deep-down motivation thing where I think Natasha shies away from him because she feels like he's really truly honestly All-American-good on a zillion levels like Steve isn't really, [whaat the Falcon is more Cappy than Cap? YES HE IS] and feels like he'll judge her, and also she tried wiles on him once and it didn't work and she felt dirty for having tried, and in general he makes her feel feelings and she doesn't like it. So she's been avoiding him. But that really doesn't mean a primarily-Natasha-POV story can actually excuse just straight-up omitting him.   
> So. Sorry, Sam stans. I didn't mean to do that. He's here now. And I find it impossible not to write Steve as in love with him, but I don't know yet how much that will actually be on-screen. This isn't a Steve story. It's a Natasha story. And it's a Bucky story. So we'll see. I'm still not sure how it ends.

The bullet slammed her around and she spun across the floor, losing her grip on one of her pistols. There was a ringing moment of silence, and then a cacophony of noise, but she was a little insulated from it by the blaring knowledge that something was wrong, she was hurt, she was downed. She curled around herself, tucking herself into what cover she could find-- the back curve of a banister, too small a space for an adult man, the kind of place an enemy would overlook-- and tried to get a breath into her damaged chest.

Some of the noise in her headset eventually resolved itself into Steve’s voice, demanding a report, and she managed to make herself answer. “Present,” she gasped. “Romanoff-- copy-- present.”

“Status,” Steve said, brusque and harsh.

She slid her hand up. She’d taken the bullet in her shoulder. It hadn’t penetrated the armor. The arm wasn’t working right though. “Bruised,” she said. More than that, the pain was sharp and radiating. “Broke a-- a bone may-- maybe.”

“Out of commission,” Steve said.

“Sort of,” she said, getting herself under control. It wasn’t like her to sound anything but businesslike on the radio. Enough of being rattled, she got shot all the time. She got enough breath to finish words before she spoke this time. “Not bleeding. I don’t-- need an extraction, I just can’t-- reach my objective unassisted.”

“Copy,” he said. “Stevens, can you assist?”

“This is Stevens, affirmative,” Stevens answered.

The pain was really hard to work through, a bad combo of grating bone pain and throbbing soft tissue damage, the kind that even a well-trained body would have trouble with. She gritted her teeth until she saw spots, and hauled herself grimly along. Stevens, fortunately, was someone she’d already done most of her posturing with post-SHIELD-collapse, and so he mostly wasn’t an issue; he just did his job. She still had to shoot a couple people he didn’t spot, and the recoil hurt her brutally but not unmanageably.

Still, she was fucking delighted to see the extraction team show up, and had absolutely no compunction against going second onto the quinjet after the other casualty, who hadn’t fared nearly so well-- shot twice, in gut and face, and he’d probably survive but his cheekbone was shattered and he looked like hell.

Her headset clicked, a private channel. “Tasha,” Steve said, “you got your phone on you?”

“No,” she said.

“Shit,” he said.

“Why?” she asked, leaning against the doorway while the medics bustled around the other casualty.

Steve’s laugh was low and soft in her ear, and a little exasperated. “Bucky’s flipping out,” he said. “He’s cracked enough of our communications that he heard you got hit, but he’s got no way of actually communicating with anyone to get an update.”

“So he-- what, called your phone,” she said, flat and disbelieving.

“Sure did,” Steve said.

“And you-- you have it on you,” she said.

“I got like a zillion pockets,” Steve said, “why not?”

“GPS tracking, for one,” Natasha said. “And for two, people call you! You’re something else, Rogers.”

“Well,” he said, “I’ll answer him, anyway. Doubt he’ll believe me.”

“Tell him he’ll have to come to you directly to get me,” Natasha suggested.

“That would be mean,” Steve said. “I’m not doing that.” And he sounded upset, and she figured she’d probably better let that go.

“I’ll work on him,” she said. And then, before Steve could sign off, she said, “Tell him if I die the lapdance video goes live. He’ll know what it means.”

“I assume that’s code,” Steve said.

“No,” Natasha said, “there’s really a surveillance video of him giving a lapdance to a captive HYDRA operative. He’s very talented, Steve.”

“I don’t know what to say to that,” Steve said.

“You should probably get back to work,” she answered him. “And stop playing on your phone! I can’t _believe_ you.”

****  
  


“You shouldn’t be able to hack our communications like that,” she said to the waiting silence in her apartment building’s entryway.

“I assumed you knew I had and were letting me get away with it,” James said, melting out of the shadows. “Give me that, why are you carrying a bag if your shoulder’s hurt? Didn’t they send anyone with you? What, they just stuck a bandage on it and shoved you out the door? What kind of piece of shit org you run with now, Romanova?”

She let him take her gym bag and steady her with his other arm, hand sliding along her lower back. “Chill,” she said. “I’ve worked with worse.”

He snorted. “True,” he said. “Christ, have we ever worked with worse.”

“Crying over a broken nose,” Natasha intoned in her best impression of Karlovski, her least favorite handler, “any sniveling little girl would cry over a broken nose,” and she stopped short when she remembered that Karlovski’s active years did not coincide with any of the Winter Soldier’s known active years.

James gave her a sidelong look, amused. “It is for the good of the party,” he said, in very distinctively-accented Russian she knew wasn’t how he normally spoke. His pitch was deeper than normal, his tone teeth-gratingly condescending. “The workers in the fields, they do not complain. It is their lot to sweat, that we might eat. And so it is our lot to bleed, that they might have the safety to sweat over the grain that feeds us.”

She had no idea if that was the sort of thing that got repeated a lot, or if she’d heard the person he was imitating saying it, but she knew how it went. Was it a standard saying? She gave him a blank look.

“C’mon,” he said gently, a hand on the small of her back as he guided her through the door, “let me see if they fixed you up properly.”

 

_______________

****  
  


“Okay spill,” Sam said, leaning against the door of Steve’s apartment after shutting it behind himself. He’d pretty much shoved Steve out of the way to come in, and he looked really unimpressed, and not at all like Steve had sort of expected he would.

“Uh,” Steve said blankly.

“You called me off,” Sam said, “said I didn’t need to look for Bucky, and then you ain’t said shit about it, and I know he’s in New York and I know Natasha knows where he is and you look smug as hell, man, don’t even front, so when are you gonna explain anything to me after I spent months trying to track that dude down?”

“I,” Steve said, and he couldn’t help it, he laughed at how intense Sam was.

“I figure you figure there’s bugs and shit and you don’t want Stark in on it but come _awwn_ mannn, you’re _killin_ ’ me,” Sam finished, with a full-body dramatic gesture.

“Okay, okay,” Steve said. He walked further into the house. “Come in, sit down, have a drink, you can’t really be in suspense, it’s not like anyone’s going to explode in the next ten minutes.”

“I kinda am though,” Sam said, following him.

“He called me,” Steve said, “and he yelled at me for half a dozen things, insinuated a number of crude and disgusting things, gave me dating advice, and got me to shout obscenities at him loud enough that Maria Hill came to see what was the matter. I laughed until I cried, Sam.”

“You laughed,” Sam said. “Until you cried.”

“Ask Hill,” Steve said. “She saw it.”

Sam considered that. “I’m going to,” he said.

“We talked about you, a little bit,” Steve said. “Bucky complimented you on your cornering abilities and on your sense of humor.”

“He put both of those to the test,” Sam said, a little grumpy, but smiled.

“He also said you had a great smile,” Steve said, gathering his courage, “and a really great ass.”

Sam’s eyebrows both went up. “He said that, did he.”

“He’s amnesiac, not blind,” Steve said, but his courage deserted him at that juncture, and he went on, “and apparently the amnesia stuff isn’t that bad, he’s got a lot back and he— he sounds like he always did,” and great, now his voice had gone shaky.

“You still gotta be careful,” Sam said, but he wasn’t so ruthless he couldn’t come over and put his arms around Steve like a good friend— _a good_ friend _, Steve, don’t fuck that up_ — and Steve rested his cheek against Sam’s temple and did not sniff him like a creeper, instead sighing and letting his body settle a little. He touched people rarely, and felt the lack, and it wasn’t even sexual.

“He’s living with Natasha,” Steve said. “Most of the time. They’re… sort of dating, I think, though he pointed out that they’re both way too messed-up for anything that conventional.”

“Huh,” Sam said, not letting go of Steve. He was kind of— he was kind of leaning in a lot, and Steve felt warmth creep up his cheeks as he considered that maybe Sam had missed him, more than a little bit. Sure he had, like a good friend, but Sam usually didn’t do the too-long hug.

“Anyway,” Steve said, and he didn’t want to, but he pulled away a little, but put his hands on Sam’s arms, not just to feel them but also to give him an intermediate not-so-far-off point to pull back to, “my point is, if anyone’s in danger, it is Natasha, who can handle it.”

“She can,” Sam said, staring into Steve’s face. “And you’re okay, man? You’re okay.”

“I am,” Steve said, a little touched. Reluctantly, he let go of Sam’s arms, patting one. “We talked about you, and he mentioned your ass, because he asked if there was anybody who knew me as anything other than Captain America, and I told him you did.”

“A really great ass,” Sam mused, finally sitting down on the sofa. “That was his exact words?”

“I think so,” Steve said. He cast back, in his memory. “Verbatim, hm. He said, good cornering, great reflexes, good sense of humor, good smile, great ass.”

“What the fuck does he know about my sense of humor?” Sam demanded.

Steve shrugged, considering it. “Well, if he keeps up with Natasha ever, he’s probably pretty good at covert observation.” It made him feel a little warm, again, to think that Bucky had been watching him. He’d suspected he might, but that was a confirmation. “He also might just have been referring to your reactions to him. I don’t know, some of the things you described struck me as pretty funny.”

“What a goof,” Sam said. Something struck him, and he slanted Steve an oblique look. “So if he’s checking out my ass, but he’s dating Natasha—“

Steve shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. “It could just be an aesthetic appreciation,” he said, wondering where his courage had fled to. It still seemed— _Hey, Sam, I’m sort of queer, is there a chance maybe you are too because it sure would be swell_ — ugh. “It is, I mean,” and he gestured. “I mean, you’d have to be blind not to notice.”

Sam laughed heartily, and Steve blushed a little at how close he’d come to admitting— it, that, this, whatever— and then his fucking phone rang.

“Get that,” Sam said, laughing, “go on, get that,” and Steve looked at the display with narrowed eyes, extremely unamused. Odds were extremely good it was some dumbass fuckin’ kid.

“Congratulations,” he said into the phone, “you’ve reached the Captain America trivia hotline! Press or say 1 for a pre-recorded statement from our star-spangled man! Press or say 2 to hear today’s Fact of the Day! Press or say 3 to make a donation to the Captain America Charity of the Week!”

“Uh,” a voice said, and it was some kid, some dumb kid, “I think— is this a recording?”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said, “I didn’t understand your selection! Please say it again.”

“I, uh,” the kid said. “Aw, they were right, it is recorded.”

“Thanks for choosing three!” Steve said. “We’ll connect you to the charity of the week’s donation hotline now!”

The line went dead, and he hung up, shaking his head.

“That’s how you answer your phone?” Sam looked incredulous.

“When it’s almost definitely a prank call, yeah,” Steve said. “I still pick up, in case it’s one of the spy types from an unlisted number or something, but I mostly just screw with them.” He shrugged. “Somebody posted the number up on a messageboard, and it got spread around. One girl, though, said she was a hacker, got through and talked to me a bit. She was pretty funny, I wasn’t mad. After that the calls tapered way off, and I think she spread around that it was a pre-recorded hotline, so I started running with that.”

“The spy types,” Sam said.

“You know,” Steve said. “Natasha sometimes, Clint once in a while, even Fury-- they call from unlisted numbers, usually when in dire straits, and while they usually leave a way for me to contact them, I find it’s faster if I just pick up. One time it was Bucky, though, and he didn’t have any other way for me to call him back, and it really made me upset. So.”

“I figured it was that last thing,” Sam said knowingly.

“I got a program on it,” Steve said. “It filters a lot. And I let it go to voicemail sometimes, now that I have a number for Bucky and know he’ll call back if he doesn’t get through.”

Sam nodded slowly, considering something. There was just always so much going on behind Sam’s eyes, Steve could never get tired of watching him-- but it wasn’t like Natasha, where things were hidden and you never quite knew what she’d come out with. Sam wasn’t an open book, but he wasn’t encrypted either. He was just self-contained, and composed.

Steve was in trouble, but it wasn’t because of Bucky.

________________

****  
  
  


“Your boyfriend’s here,” Sophie said, and it wasn’t nasty but it wasn’t quite good-natured either.

“I got a lot of boyfriends,” Lakeisha lied. Like she’d been on a single date in five years. Like she’d ever really had a boyfriend in the first place.

“The hot one,” Sophie said.

“Girl, they’re all hot,” Lakeisha said, pasting on attitude for the sake of humor. She really wanted to tell Sophie to go fuck her own judgmental ass, but that would perhaps be a conversation for another time. Namely, in the shower, to herself, for pretend. Lakeisha knew this, but gave herself a moment as she walked out to the front room to imagine Sophie’s face bursting into flames with the force of the imagined telling off.

“What now, Jimbo,” she said, trying and failing to sneak up on him where he was half-sprawled on one of the reading couches. She’d never once succeeded in sneaking up on him, and actually didn’t want to know what would happen if she did.

“Just wanted to see your shinin’ face,” he said. He had the insouciant cockiness dialed up all the way, and he was real damn pretty. “Light of my life an’ all.”

“Yeah,” she said, with a laugh, “all that. You’re the star in the crown of my extensive harem.” She leaned her hip on the arm of the reading couch, crossed her arms, considered pretending more intimate body language to wind Sophie up but dismissed the thought. Sophie would think whatever she wanted to think regardless.

“I’m flattered,” James said. “So I came because I feel like texting about the latest developments on the Winter Soldier’s Verified Blog would be too low-key.”

“How latest are these developments?” Lakeisha asked, putting a hand to her chest. A couple weeks before, a blog had popped up claiming to be by the Winter Soldier, and not long after, one of the coveted green checkmarks reserved for verified celebrities and public figures had popped up next to the handle, and the Internet had exploded. Nobody was saying precisely what identity-verification guidelines the putative Winter Soldier had actually provided, but everyone directly involved was sort of grimly matter-of-fact that the guy was who he said he was.

He had posted a few pictures, mostly of his metal middle finger, and staunchly refused to provide any bonafides, saying he’d already verified himself well enough to the officials and part of that deal was that he wasn’t allowed to talk about it. But he had opened up the site’s Q feature and was answering selected user-submitted questions, at random intervals. Before he’d gotten verified, he’d been posting stuff, and Lakeisha had been keeping an eye on the account and had been thinking it might actually be James-- there was a New Yorky vibe to it, a similarity in writing style, and in the few pictures you could tell the guy was white, dark-haired, tall.

Until the green checkmark had appeared. That kinda changed things. She knew that site in particular was the gold standard of being careful about verifying people. Some sites handed that shit out like candy, but not this one. He had to have provided some pretty compelling proofs. Possibly at gunpoint.

And the handle the Soldier used on the darkweb messageboards, the one he used to solicit jobs sometimes, and answer allegations about his activities for business-related purposes-- that handle was in on it and had made several references to it. Whoever was doing the Soldier’s actual work was at least tolerating the Verified Blog, which was as compelling an argument as Lakeisha could imagine.

James pulled his phone out and scrolled through it one-handed. “Started about six hours ago.”

“Did he answer my question?” Lakeisha nearly grabbed James’s phone in her excitement.

“You ask questions on there?” James held his phone out of reach, giving her an eyebrow raise. “What’s your handle?”

“Uh,” Lakeisha said. “No?” Of fucking course she’d asked him a question. Not a real one, not something she really wanted to know, she wasn’t an idiot. But yeah, she’d asked.

James gave her a lingering, suspicious look. “I didn’t know you were in on this,” he said, accusatory. “I thought you were above us seething masses accepting the scraps and dribbles set out to tease us. I thought you were, like, good at finding stuff out.”

“I contain multitudes,” Lakeisha said, drawing up what dignity she could muster. It lasted about a second, and then she slouched and said, “C’m _awwwn_ tell me what he _said_ ,” in a whine she would’ve chastised her baby for using.

“Nobody likes a whiner,” James said primly, scrolling unconcernedly through whatever he was looking at. He looked over at her hands, though. “Where’s your phone?”

“In my purse,” she said. “We can’t have our phones while we’re workin’, James, that’s not allowed.”

“Oh,” he said, and relented. “Fine, okay, I guess you’re excused for not already knowing.” He held his phone to his chest. “Just tell me what your handle is and I’ll tell you if he answered your question.”

Lakeisha crossed her arms over her chest and glowered at him. He was definitely a dude who’d had siblings. She’d be willing to bet he’d had little sisters. He teased her just like Jeremy. “Tell me what he said.”

He gave her a sweet smile. “I will,” he said. “Just tell me which question was yours and I’ll tell you first. He answered a bunch.”

“I asked him if he was Elvis,” she sighed.

“That was you?” He crowed with laughter. “That’s what I was gonna show you! Aw I was so excited to tell you about it.” He scrolled back up. “You’re Witness?”

“Maybe,” Lakeisha grumbled. “What’d he say?”

“Q,” James read, “ _Are you Elvis?_ A:” He stopped, and looked at her. “I’m not making this up,” he said. “ _Bitch, I might be._ ”

“He did not,” she said.

James laughed. “He did,” he said. “He so did.”

“Give me that,” she begged, holding out her hand.

James held the phone out of reach, gave her an assessing look, and then slid over on the couch. “Fine,” he said, and held the phone so she could look at it. She sat next to him and stared raptly at the screen.

“ _q: are you a super soldier like captain america?_

_a: Yes and no? He’s the good kind, I’m not. I got the cheap knockoff version of everything, plus I had no memories so I had no moral compass, so it just goes to show you, magic super juice gets you great strength and healing but doesn’t make you a good dude. I bet I can aim better than he can, but I had that before I got, uh, altered. Apart from that? Well, he and I fought twice but it wasn’t good for anybody. I’m not fighting him again, and that’s pretty much the only thing I won’t do no matter how hard-up for cash I am. I’m not fighting him, I won’t take him out, I won’t face him, I want nothing to do with him._

 

_q: were you an American soldier / are you American?_

_a: yes and yes_

__

_q: how old are you?_

_a: real goddamn old okay, that’s as specific as I’m getting_

__

_q: Rumors abound that you are none other than Sergeant James “Bucky” Barnes, boyhood friend of Steve Rogers of Captain America fame. Is there any credence to this?_

_a: Jesus, you don’t fuck around. Everyone else is thinking it and you’re just like, straight to the chase. Not gonna lie, this is probably the most popular rumor about me._  
_There are a lot of rumors about who I could possibly be, and okay the Bucky one’s my favorite too, I admit it. But I’m not Bucky._  
_Look, whoever I was, he was declared dead, and to his family, he died a hero. It’d probably be for the best if we just… let him lie. I’m not him anymore, I’m not any kind of credit to the family and institutions that raised him._  
_Think about it, though. There are other people I’m just as likely to be as Barnes. There’s a particular dark-haired, blue-eyed musician whose death is widely contested in popular Americana, who was also a US Army sergeant, who was also a dark-haired white man with blue eyes… You all know I can dance, thanks to that awesome surveillance video. By the way. I am a mercenary for hire, and while my primary skillsets are in fact wetwork and intimidation, I have considerable dancing experience. If anyone wants me for a music video, my contract is very reasonable. It would be a nice fucking change.  
_ _My point is, it doesn’t really matter who I was, I’m not him anymore. Let him lie in peace._

__

_q: when you were a little kid what did you want to be when you grew up_

_a: the ice cream man  
_ _seriously though, think that over. How sweet a gig would that be? That’s what I always thought would be the best job._

__

_q: are you Elvis?_

_a: bitch I might be. also see #4 above. The arguments are compelling. ”_

__

“Whoa,” Lakeisha said, scrolling back up, “wait, whoa whoa whoa, what’s-- he mentioned Elvis before I asked him! Look at that!”

“He did,” James said. “He’s definitely talking about Elvis.”

“He also protested waaaaaayyy too much about the Bucky thing,” she said. She glanced over at James. “Like, _way_ too much. Like, _I’m definitely him_ too much.”

“Yeah?” James said. He scrolled back up, reread it, pulled a face.

“You look really sad about that,” Lakeisha said. “Why, did you really think he was Elvis?”

“No,” James said. He really did look upset. “Just-- Bucky was one of my big heroes when I was a kid, y’know?” He glanced over at her. “Army and all. Meant a lot to me. I really didn’t want it to be true.”

“That’s shitty,” Lakeisha said, finding herself getting a little mad. “So what if he’s Bucky! How does that make him _less_ a hero, that he survived? It’s not like he had a choice in any of it.”

James looked away uncomfortably. “I dunno,” he said, fidgeting with his phone, not really looking at it. The screen changed as he hit a back button or something, and blanked as it reloaded, but he wasn’t looking at it.

“That poor guy,” Lakeisha said. “So he was this big war hero and like pioneered the entire concept of the Special Forces and did all kinds of insanely brave shit and actually got himself killed, and bad guys resurrected him and used him as a goddamn meat puppet for their nefarious bidding for like a goddamn century, and then he managed to sheer-force-of-will himself out of that and you’re disappointed. Disappointed? I tell you what if that disappoints you, you weren’t a Bucky Barnes fan in the first place.”

She stood up. “Man I gotta get back to work but I want you to go home and think about how you’ve wronged Bucky Barnes in your heart. I won’t stand for that kind of thing.”

As she walked away, James climbed slowly to his feet and shoved his phone back into his pocket, and she considered the odd look on his face (she’d figured he’d laugh; he wasn’t) and the fact that the page he’d accidentally back-buttoned to sure looked a hell of a lot like the main inbox page for someone logged into that site, and if his account name wasn’t the Winter Soldier’s official account handle it was a pretty damn close typo for it. Which was in and of itself unexpected; why would he want to impersonate the Soldier more than he already was? She hadn’t gotten a clear look so she wasn’t sure, but there was a pretty good chance, either way, that James was more involved in all this than he pretended.

It was another little thing for the list.

****  
  
  


_____________________

****  
  
  
  
  


“-- don’t want to hear from you again without concrete results,” Natasha said.

“You call in feelings all the t--” the goon started, and she cut him off.

“No,” she said. “When you are as good as me, you can go by your gut instinct. But you have not proved yourself to me. I will not act on your suppositions. Get me proof, I will be there for you.”

The door opened quietly with a key, no fumbling, which meant James. She wasn’t used to a roommate yet, she really wasn’t, but she was glad he seemed to be settling in. “Yes ma’am,” her contact said sulkily.

“Don’t sulk, just do,” she said, and hung up. James breezed through the kitchen and had gone down the hall to the bathroom before she finished with her phone. He hadn’t stopped to take his coat and shoes off, which he normally did. Also, he normally greeted her, but she supposed he’d heard her on the phone and hadn’t wanted to interrupt.

“Want some tea?” she called. She had already put the kettle on, prepared just for herself, but it would be polite to offer. James didn’t answer, which was odd; he had excellent hearing and was diligent about manners. Distracted, she supposed, and added water to the kettle anyway.

He was worth the hassle. She had grown accustomed to living and working alone and enjoying it, but there were things about having a companion that were undeniably pleasant. Apart from the regular orgasms, which he seemed to delight in providing and, to her surprise, she had not yet lost any of her enthusiasm for. For one, he was beyond competent, and it was wonderful indeed to have backup she could rely on. But beyond even combat, he was nice to have around. Through the whole ordeal of the broken bone in her shoulder, he’d managed simultaneously not to annoy her and to dote on her through her recovery. It was a weird and welcome change from anyone else she’d ever had take care of her. He was so good at it, was the thing-- sweet and doting, but never clingy or hovery, he tended to forsee problems and mostly avoid them, and at the first hint of crankiness he backed down, never insisting on reason but always finding a way around the thorny spot. His sympathy and patience were unflagging, and it more than made up for the weird shit she’d had to put up with him doing.

And she hadn’t done a load of laundry since even before the injury, which was more than just a little nice-- James had adapted to modern conveniences pretty handily and was far more exacting about the care of laundry items than even she was, which meant that a lot of her so-called easy care items were presently hanging in her closet having been actually properly ironed. It was very odd, and actually a little inconvenient in some cases where outfits she chose for a slightly less-fussy appearance were currently a bit too tidily-presented for the image she’d be going for while wearing them, but she wasn’t going to complain.

James still hadn’t come out. It finally pinged at her and she looked up from her contemplation of the teapot, frowning. She went down the hall. “James,” she said, pausing outside the bathroom door.

“Be out in a minute,” he said, and nothing sounded off about his voice, but she looked down at the floor and there was a smudge of blood there. Like, part of a footprint, like someone had bled down their leg and it was puddling on the bottom of their shoe.

“How bad is it?” she asked, resigned.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Did you want tea?” she asked.

“I hadn’t really gotten around to thinking of it,” he admitted.

“Well,” she said, “I’m making you some,” and went back to the kitchen. The kettle came to a boil and she started the tea steeping, but she couldn’t concentrate on it. She came back out to the hallway. “All right,” she said, “let me see it.”

“No,” he said, but it had the air of a reflexive response; he didn’t sound really convinced.

“I’m not going to lecture you,” she said. “What, is it somewhere private?”

He laughed, short and cut-off but unmistakable, and water ran in the sink, and then he opened the door. “No,” he said, “I just don’t need help.”

“Oh my God,” she said, taking half a step back. There was blood everywhere, was her first impression, but then she could see that he’d just soaked through most of his shirt in blood and was still bleeding. He had his jacket off and his t-shirt hiked up, still covering the metal arm but off his right arm and hooked up over his neck to keep it out of the way, exposing a bare torso that was just covered in deep gashes.

“Looks worse than it is,” he said. “I’m just trying to get it cleaned up enough that I can glue it.”

“I don’t know if you can glue half your torso back on,” she said, alarmed. None of the gashes were broad enough to show bone, but they were all pretty deep-looking.

He glanced up at her. He had blood on his face too-- he’d been hit in the face a couple times, his nose was bleeding and his lip was split. He didn’t seem distressed, but he was pale-- he’d certainly lost a significant volume of blood. “I read the directions,” he said primly. “If the muscle layer is disrupted or there’s tissue missing, you need stitches, but if it’s just separated skin you can use glue.”

“I think you’re a little optimistic there,” she said, stepping into the bathroom. “That’s clearly muscle. You got stabbed?”

“Yeah,” he said, “there was a crazy ninja or something.”

“Ninja,” she said.

He did one of his full-face shrugs that were so amusingly expressive and involved little shoulder movement. She wondered if he’d evolved them before or after his shoulders had become science experiments.

Probably before; he hadn’t exactly been encouraged in facial expressiveness in the era where they’d pretty much shackled a mask to him.

“There were a bunch of guys,” he said, “and this one dude had like, these spinning blades on chains.”

“I assume he doesn’t anymore,” she said, slightly alarmed.

“No,” James said, “I punched him pretty thoroughly and broke the chain thingies.” She blinked at him, and he gave her a slightly hangdog look. “I got kinda mad at him, I hate that fakey-ninja bullshit. He might not’ve survived the punching. I didn’t check.”

She looked him over, then sighed. “I’m going to go finish making the tea, then come back and help you. Hold pressure on that and don’t move, you’re making it worse.”

He did need a combination of stitches and glue, and it took her ages to put them in and it was only after she’d finished with the whole elaborate gash-scape on his ribs that he bothered to let on that he’d also gotten a pretty serious stab wound to the thigh and was quietly losing massive amounts of blood.

“I just gotta hold pressure,” he insisted, despite the fact that he’d been sitting on the closed toilet lid holding pressure on it the entire time she’d been stitching him up and was still bleeding badly. Like, there was a puddle. That badly. She couldn’t understand how he’d ever made it home bleeding like that.

“Holy shit,” she said faintly.

“It’s not like you gotta stitch something like that,” he protested. “That’s the kind of thing that heals up on its own in cryo.”

She stared at him for a long moment until he thought through what he’d said. “I’m not putting you in cryo,” she said.

He blinked. “No,” he said, looking distantly toward the floor, “no, you’re not.”

“Which means I have to stop this bleeding,” she went on.

He bit his lip. “I can just, I can do the torpor thing without cryo.”

“Is that the thing where you lie in the bathtub and your lips go blue?” she asked. “Because I’d like to request that you not do that.”

He looked guilty. “I don’t,” he said, but trailed off.

“You came in here planning to do that,” she realized, looking at his jacket where he’d dumped it in the bathtub. She’d figured he was just being fastidious about the blood. “You were just going to stick some glue on those cuts, shove some gauze in this hole, and climb in the tub for me to find you and freak out.”

He blinked, following her gesture, and appeared to consider it. “Maybe,” he said. “Only-- not for a long time. Only a few hours.” He looked shifty. “Overnight.”

She sighed. “Come sit in the living room where it is comfortable,” she said, “and drink some tea, and I will stop the bleeding and you will go to bed like a human.”

He curled up on the couch in clean pajamas with his legs in her lap, the stab wound cleanly packed with disinfectant and gauze and held elevated. He drank a big glass of water, then made it about halfway through the cup of tea before he passed the hell out, and his heart rate slowed alarmingly but at least his skin stayed pink and his breathing stayed even and perceptible.

He’d been partly operating on autopilot, was the part that made Natasha feel sick. She knew what that had been like. Nobody else really understood, not even Clint had really understood, that she’d learned to do so many things on autopilot. It was one of many things her training had done that went above and beyond what other organizations were willing to do: drilling more and more decisions into instinct and muscle memory. Procedure never took thought, it was instinct. Reaction times were faster when it was pure unconsidered reflex. Augmenting her reflexes on top of that had made her unstoppable, but the pure solid foundation of it was to make her conscienceless, unconsidering-- you adhered to procedure in anything that could be made rote, and thus with most of your attention freed up, you never hesitated and never were so taken by surprise that you couldn’t react and adapt.

The Winter Soldier was the logical, brutal extension of that, in a model that had not had to maintain considerations of fitting in with normal society and even being charming to potential victims. Without that veneer of socialization, his conditioning had left him nothing but reflex and procedure, laid over sheer animal instinct and burned-in muscle memory. So when he was hurt, he returned to base and sought maintenance, then went into torpor to be dealt with as his handlers saw fit.

It wouldn’t do, but simply making herself into his handler wouldn’t change anything.

She woke up the next morning, after having been half-aware of disturbances for a little while, with her cold tea on the coffee table and James just putting the cleaning supplies away. He’d cleaned the bathroom and while he looked a little pale, the stab wound was scabbed over and the stitches were working their way out of his torso. “Only been eight hours,” he said, looking smug as he hauled his shirt up to pick at now-unnecessary glue. “Standard recovery time is twelve.”

“But it works without you going into torpor,” she said.

He smiled, and it was an unexpectedly sweet expression. “It does,” he said. “I didn’t know. It actually works better.”

“Next time come to me first,” she said.

He nodded. “I-- wasn’t really thinking clearly.”

“I know you weren’t,” she said, “and I know it’s more than that.” He nodded again. His hair was damp; he’d showered, and had put on thick layers of warm, soft clothes, and had in general made himself comfortable and human.

“I don’t want to just replace their standard procedures with mine,” she went on in a moment.

“The thing about conditioning,” he said, “is you don’t always realize you have it, and it’s exhausting, because now you gotta think about the stuff you don’t think about. Like, most people have stuff they do without considering it. I don’t gotta reconsider which foot to lead with when I go up stairs. I don’t always have to check for snipers, but it’s not a bad habit per se.”

“It’s the same criteria as mental disorders,” Natasha said. “Everyone has tendencies toward certain behaviors. It’s only a disorder if it impedes normal life, normal activities and relationships. If it hurts you or the people around you. So it’s okay unless it gets in your way.”

James rinsed the coffee pot and emptied the filter basket as he thought that over. He wasn’t even limping, but he was preferentially putting more weight on the uninjured leg when not in motion. “So,” he said, but left the thread of conversation dangling there.

“So you going into torpor in my bathtub impedes our normal relationship because it freaks me out and you might die from it,” Natasha said. “That’s not okay.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

____________________

The Winter Soldier was, with 100% certainty, currently active as a mercenary. Lakeisha had no trouble confirming that. There was unambiguous confirmation of this available from multiple sources, numerous sightings and firsthand accounts. Including postings she’d already known about, that he had apparently made himself on various darkweb boards, Tor sites, putting up his shingle as a mercenary. He seemed to be largely specializing in security consulting, having designed security systems for several wealthy private individuals-- he’d gotten the gigs out of notoriety and cachet, but the general consensus was that he was real good, and very well-informed about current technologies and their possibilities.

He also did a lot of straight-up mercenary work, pretty much doing intimidation and enforcement on behalf of warrior gangs trying to gain advantage over other warrior gangs. He’d done a series of exercises with the army of a particular embattled former Soviet state, which was fascinating; he’d also been somehow, shadily involved with some CIA thing nobody had any coherent records of. He’d worked with Interpol, or possibly against them, no one would say for sure. He’d been very busy, and while there were no concrete records of any large-scale financial transactions, he had to have earned a fair amount of money in the last year or so.

It was speculated, however, that he’d also spent a great deal of money. A number of individuals connected to former victims of the Winter Soldier had suddenly come into money in unexpected ways, and the general consensus among those scrutinizing the situation was that the Soldier had given it to them himself.

He had no known residence, no traceable base of operations; he seemed to frequently route transactions through a financial institution based on a small island off of Norway, but he’d never notably had a physical presence there. Lakeisha tried to come up with anything that might tie him to New York City, but he had no confirmed presence there, only rumors, and a lot of those rumors were based on hearsay and lookalikes.

He also was pretty clearly, as much as anything in the world of covert ops was clear, tied to the Black Widow, however, who was a whole other can of worms. Lakeisha could find all kinds of information on the Black Widow, of course, as the Widow had personally overseen the public data dump of 75 years of SHIELD records, and had admirably enough made no attempt to spare herself.

SHIELD’s data, of course, included their entire exhaustive dossier on the Black Widow, compiled before she was captured and during her debriefing. Lakeisha had skimmed it before, on a few occasions, enough to have the usual reactions-- surprise that there had originally been 28 Black Widow agents, shock that they began training them as young children, too-prurient interest in some of the sexier details of her early career, ghoulish fascination with the gorier details of some of her more spectacular jobs. But she read it more closely, and followed the threads as deep as she could follow them. In the collapse of the Soviet Union, a great deal of data had surfaced, but a lot of it was junk, and Lakeisha knew that some of the Black Widow’s casualness about exposing herself was due to her foreseeing that. More data was not better; much of it was garbage, and it was easy to lose the thread of what was true among all of the dreck.

It took days, squeezed in among all her work and childcare and dinner with the aunties and various social obligations-- stretched out to a week by Jeremy getting set off by something and going catatonic and Jimmy had to come get her and she had to call Jeremy’s therapist and get help talking him down when he came back to himself and had a bad paranoid episode.

But she finally found a good thread to pull-- an old CIA database, digitized by a splinter group from the Red Room, containing much of the early experiments of the Red Room, as well as some tantalizing hints about the Winter Soldier, who’d been under their purview for a time. Lakeisha devoured it, and found a fellow-traveler online, another young hacker who had devoted a great deal of time and effort to tracing the same things.

In a late-night session that shouldn’t have gone as late as it did, Lakeisha chatted with this other hacker, who had made concrete plans to travel to Russia in the upcoming year. They mostly spoke of other things, and AE340 grew chattier speaking about early hacking experiences.

AE340: I get away with a lot of stuff because nobody figures I know anything

Witness: Me too! Let’s just say I don’t look like the hackers on TV.

A: I know right?

A: It makes me wonder though

W: I know, like, how dumb are people

A: they can surprise you both ways but mostly in disappointing ways. but i wonder-- what’s your secret? how are you different, hm?

W: nah bro let’s not go there

A: no i’ll go first

W: i bet i can guess

A: can you??

W: well, #1 you’re not white, for sure

A: how do you know that?

W: relax i’m not either

A: … okay, yeah, I’m Asian, but how did you know that?

W: and #2 I bet you’re a chick

A: ok I never slip up with that, how did you know?!?!

W: relax so am I. I know because dudes are never careful about that, and chicks always are. and there are always more women than you’d expect in any given environment, so it’s a good guess. if they don’t seem to be thinking about it, they’re a dude. if they’re careful to avoid mentioning it, they’re a woman. because telling anyone you’re a woman is like-- game over.

A: oh I knowwww

A: OMG i’m freaking out

A: you’ve been my idol since forever

W: well don’t go telling anybody

A: is that why you’re so interested in the black widow? is she your hero too?

W: actually no! I have always admired her, but really I’m on this wild goose chase because of the winter soldier

A: really! why so taken with him?

W: I got a one-armed military-vet brother. And now you prolly know enough to find me in real life, and so I’m trusting you not to, y’dig?

A: don’t phrase that like a challenge bro

A: LOL I mean sis

A: and yes, I dig

A: that’s really sweet

W: My bro is a lil fucked up and the soldier’s funny dancing vid like made his day

W: and i kinda ran into some other WS fans and it’s like mutating into my life’s work and the more I find out the more I feel like i owe it to the guy to keep looking

W: so the more I find out about the black widow the more i find out about him and the madder I get.

A: OMG I feel you completely on that one

A: well I’ll follow any threads i find about him too while i’m over there

A: I can’t wait to get over there. There’s just so much that isn’t digital, I know, and I just can’t wait

W: you gotta take care of yourself though

W: for real

W: i know digital is for real too, and there’s enough danger in what we do, but in person-- in person they’ll know right away you’re a girl and that gets you in for a whole world of new and exciting shit

A: Yeah, I know, I’m kinda nervous about that but I can’t let it stop me, not when I have to know-- you know??

W: I do know. I really do. But I mean it. Be careful.

Lakeisha left the conversation, far too late at night, firmly convinced that AE340 was a teenage girl who was going to go on an exchange program, and even her exhaustion wouldn’t let her sleep with her stomach all knotted up with worry for the girl. She was bright and funny and full of potential.

Just like someone else had been at her age. _If I could build armor_ , Lakeisha thought, _and use it to make teenage girls invulnerable, I would do that and have it be my life’s work_.

****  
  


_____________________

Steve clicked on the little icon with trepidation. He’d done video calls on the computer before, fairly often really, and it was kind of funny, he thought, that modern people still seemed to sometimes regard them as fairly nifty, because he was so used to the high-resolution displays SHIELD had that the computer ones really often seemed low-fi and unusably glitchy.

“OK,” he texted, but the message hadn’t even sent yet when an incoming call request came in, from Natasha’s latest handle.

He took a breath, let it out, and clicked on it.

Natasha’s face was right there. “Hi,” he said.

“Hey,” she said, beaming, and he could see her hand with a glass of red wine in it.

“You look pretty drunk,” he said. “And here I thought you just missed me.”

“We built a pillow fort,” Natasha said, glancing offscreen, “and he’s hiding in it now. Hang on.” She set the wineglass down and angled the laptop, and sure enough, there was a couch cushion at an angle it shouldn’t be, and a blanket. “James. Come on.”

“What are you, chicken?” Steve said, though he wasn’t sure his heart was still beating.

The blanket moved. A hand came out. A metal hand. Flipping the bird. “Fuck you, Rogers,” Bucky said, unmistakably Bucky, and the blanket slid aside and Bucky stuck his face out, hair everywhere. He shook his hair back and Steve tried to say something and shut his mouth when nothing would come out.

Shit. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. He took a shaky breath, but it was no good.

Bucky could see him now, and Steve knew it was a lost cause. “Hey,” Bucky said. “Hey. Hey.” He came very close to the camera, hair a dark curtain, eyes kind. He looked like himself. He looked-- like himself.

“Hey you,” Steve managed, and it came out pretty strangled. He swallowed. “I missed you, buddy.”

Bucky sat back a tiny bit, but he was staring at the screen, slightly lower than the camera, and Steve knew that was where his face was on the screen, and he made himself glance up to the camera, and set his mouth so he wouldn’t sob. “Stevie,” Bucky said, anguished. “Stevie. Don’t.”

“I can’t help it, Buck,” Steve said. “Gimme a minute, don’t be a jerk.”

“You’re a jerk,” Bucky shot back automatically, and he looked like he wanted to grab the screen, like he was dying to touch Steve, like he didn’t understand it was a camera, and Steve knew that wasn’t it at all, but he understood the impulse anyway.

“I’m not the fuckin’ jerk who fell off a fuckin’ train,” Steve said. Aw fuck, they were doing this now. They’d had a couple of conversations by now and had managed to be light-hearted, but somehow, seeing Bucky’s face made it unmanageable.

“No,” Bucky shot back, “you’re the fuckin’ jerk who never fuckin’ learned how to land a fuckin’ plane! What the fuck was that, Stevie? What the fuck was that?”

To his mortification, the floodgates opened, and Steve had to turn his face away. “I didn’t know what else to do, Bucky,” he choked out. “I didn’t— there was nowhere to land and it was full of fuckin’ bombs and I didn’t know what to do.”

Bucky was silent, and when Steve managed to look back, he had one hand clamped at the top of the laptop, near the camera, and tears streaming down his face too. “I’m sorry,” Bucky said thickly.

“Don’t be sorry,” Steve said. “God! Don’t— you were dead, Buck, there’s nothin’ you coulda done.”

“I wasn’t, though,” he said, and the tears ran faster. “Jesus we’re such a fuckin’ mess,” he said, breaking off and letting go of the laptop to wipe his face.

“Why won’t you see me?” Steve asked, after a moment, when he could speak.

Bucky wiped his face again. “What if I got sleeper programming, Stevie?” he asked quietly. “What if I see you and it sets somethin’ off and I—“ He had to stop, looked away, and God he was so beautiful, he was so himself, even as he bit back a sob.

“Wouldn’t you know by now?” Steve asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said quietly, then repeated it, fiercer. “I don’t know, Steve! They didn’t leave a fuckin’ user’s manual.” A sob escaped then, and it was a noise of heartbroken frustration, and it cut Steve right through the middle.

“Natasha,” Steve said, and repeated it twice before she poked her head in the corner of the frame. “Natasha, just— put your arms around him for a minute, will you?”

Natasha sat smoothly on the couch next to Bucky and gathered him into an embrace. He put his head down in the crook of her shoulder and wrapped his regular arm, not the metal one, around her back, fingers curling in her shirt, and it was so fucking familiar.

“It’s all right, James,” she murmured. “Bucky. I know what to look for. It’s probably safe but if it’s not I’ll know what to do.”

They sat like that for a moment and Bucky was still and quiet, fingers wound all through the fabric of her shirt. Finally he spoke.

“I’m not who I was, Steve,” Bucky said, muffled in Natasha’s shoulder. “I’m not what I was. I’m not-- I’m not really a person, Steve-- I’m a-- I’m just an idea.”

“Bucky,” Steve said.

“It’s true,” Bucky insisted, raising his head to look at the camera.

Steve gave him a small, sad smile. “The mechanism was different,” he said, “but the same thing happened to me. We talked about this. I’m not a person either, anymore. While I was in the ice Steve Rogers died, and when I came out there was only Captain America, and I got nothin’ left. You’re the only one who remembers.”

Bucky stared at him, dumbfounded, and finally managed, “That’s not the same, though,” he said. “It’s-- I’ve done horrible things, Steve.”

“So have I,” Steve said. “Bucky, SHIELD was HYDRA. I worked for them for years. I don’t even know how many missions I ran for them, how many times I was told I was fighting enemies when it turns out, I was the enemy.”

“You’re a monster, Steve,” Natasha put in.

“We’re all monsters, Bucky,” Steve said.

Bucky looked at Natasha, then over at Steve. “Well,” he said, “fuck you guys, _I’m_ not a monster anymore,” and managed to keep a straight face for about six seconds.

Steve laughed until he cried. Again.

****  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went through a phase of being good at comments but then I moved to the woods and lost it, and now I'm back in civilization and the phase hasn't returned. I still love you all and am having a blast with this story.


	8. Don't Be Cruel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James is not exactly human, but-- he's also very, very human.  
> Fanservice, blood loss, verified social media accounts, and Steve Rogers joins the social media fray with exceeding saltiness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I also wrote a little [Tumblr-exclusive snippet prequel to this chapter where Natasha repaints James's toenails, over here](http://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/132047185179/i-felt-shitty-today-so-i-wrote-this-on-gdocs). It's got no plot bearing, I was just having a rough day and wanted to spend some time elsewhere. Natasha knows how to be a good friend on a hard day.

 

He was dead. Natasha was sure he was dead. She stood in the doorway of the secondary safehouse apartment, the one he had checked for bugs all those months ago, and put her hands over her mouth like a woman in a horror movie, like an ineffectual civilian, and stood there staring in silent shock at the way James was lying facedown on the kitchen floor, booted legs sprawled, one toe turned in, a congealed pool of blood spilling out from under his midsection.

“James,” she said finally, a breath of sound and no more. It was enough to remind her to move. She pulled the door shut behind herself and stepped into the apartment, noting the handprints of dried blood on the inside of the door, on the edge of the table; he’d been unsteady, had tried to walk further into the apartment. He’d come here under his own power, but barely.

He wasn’t moving at all. There was no smell of death; it only smelled of blood. Perhaps he wasn’t dead. But it was a lot of blood, and the pool was clearly congealed, even dried around the edges, and his back wasn’t moving with his breath. He hadn’t been dead long, but he couldn’t be alive.

She should get out, should go and disavow all knowledge of this place, and let him lie until discovered by some innocent. The less she touched in this place, the better; leave no trace, no sign anyone had entered since he came here. Don’t go to him, don’t touch his shoulder, don’t kneel beside him, but she found herself doing each of those things.

She told herself she had to find out who had done it, and avenge him, not for sentimental reasons but because if there were someone capable of killing the Winter Soldier they could not be left alone afterward, could not be allowed to continue in their terrible power.

His shoulder was cold under her hand, and rigid, so he’d been here hours at least but no more than a day or two. “James,” she whispered again, and it was stupid, it was sentiment she didn’t have time for. He was half-curled, his face against the floor, his metal arm bent up under his body and his other arm awkwardly contorted near his face. From the congealing pool of blood, he’d been badly injured in the body, high in the gut, perhaps compromising the liver or spleen, which was an awful, slow, inexorable way to die. And completely unnecessary, if he’d had anyone to go to for help; that kind of injury was usually something medical attention could repair.

If she’d been here, she could have saved him. He’d only died because he was alone.

She hadn’t seen him in four days.

She sat back on her heels and pulled her phone out. She’d have to call this in, she couldn’t leave him here to bloat, for the rats, for some hapless superintendent to find after the little old lady in the apartment below complained of the odd stain on her kitchen ceiling. Who to call, though?

God, she couldn’t face calling Steve. _Sorry, I didn’t try all that hard to make Bucky come in, and then I let him die instead of helping him make a support network, and the last thing I said to him was—_

It wasn’t helpful, and she cut the memory off, and leaned back down.

She moved her fingers to the skin of his neck, as if it would really help her to know precisely how long he’d been dead, how many hours earlier it could have struck her to check and see if he’d come by here and had it matter. His skin was cold but still soft; she could pinch it under her fingers and it moved like living skin. Not many hours at all.

Fuck.

She slid her fingers down under his jaw, as if it made sense to feel for a pulse in a corpse gone cold. She couldn’t call Steve. She couldn’t call Tony either, because he’d take possession of the corpse and that would kill Steve. There was no way Tony would be able to respectfully study the arm without just plain breaking Steve’s spirit. Fuck. She’d have to call Fury, and hope he could figure it out.

Something fluttered under her fingers and she dropped her phone as she recoiled. If the cockroaches had already started— Heart in her mouth, she slid her fingers back under his jaw, and was rewarded in a moment with another tiny movement under his skin.

Holy _fuck_. He had a pulse.

It was a slow pulse, and his body temperature had to be significantly under normal, but— she moved her hand up to his face, under the curtain of his hair, and rested a finger under his nose, and after a very long moment, the faintest movement of slightly-warm air rewarded her. “Holy fuck,” she said out loud, and sat back on her heels again, hands shaking too badly to do anything. “Holy fucking shit.”

She cried then, even though it was stupid, and went to get her first aid kit from the bathroom. He hadn’t made it that far. She recognized this state, now-- torpor. She hadn’t realized it could look like this. God, he might have been here for days after all.

She sobbed as she rolled him over onto his back. He’d unfastened his tac gear, had wadded a hunk of fabric into the wound; it looked like he’d taken a shotgun blast or two to the ribcage at close range, but it was largely healed into heavily-scabbed chunks. “You goddamn idiot,” she said, pausing to wipe her face, then shoved his torn-up tac jacket out of the way and cut his shirt off him to expose the wound. No exit wound, and pellets dropped to the floor with little clicks as she brushed them away; his body had slowly pushed them out as he healed. Not all of them; he surely had more metal in him than before, but he tended to collect it. There was little point in cleaning the wounds, but she did, largely to see the unmarked swathes of his skin, bruised underneath where he was reabsorbing the subcutaneous blood.

There was saline in the first aid kit, a couple packs of it, still within their expiration date, so she rigged an IV stand out of a kitchen chair and with great difficulty found a vein to set the needle into. No point giving him antibiotics or antihistamines or antivenoms or any of the other goodies in the extremely well-stocked first aid kit, but the saline would help rehydrate him.

She bandaged him, then dragged him with great effort into the living room, improvised IV stand and all, so she could clean the kitchen floor. The linoleum would be stained, but it had been stained before by unknown things and she wasn’t worried. When she came back he was still exactly as she’d left him. He was too heavy for her to pick him up-- he weighed far, far, _far_ more than a human his size would-- so she left him on the living room floor and collected pillows and blankets, then undressed him, sponged him approximately clean— he was filthy, mostly with actual dirt and gunpowder residue and blood— and dressed him in a clean t-shirt and sweatpants.

His toenails were still painted. Not the initial dark red she’d done, but the teal green he’d requested when she’d redone hers, with the little swipe of pink glitter topcoat just on the big toenails. Seeing that made her want to cry again, and she wasn’t sure why, but she fought down the impulse and wrapped him in blankets instead.

She did let herself sit for a moment with his head in her lap, combing the tangles out of his hair and smoothing her hands across his face. He looked asleep now, if too-pale and old and tired-looking. But he wasn’t dead.

 

She’d made a pot of soup and a pan of cornbread, had switched to a second bag of saline, and was just reassembling his cleaned guns when he finally moved. She heard his breathing deepen first, and for a couple of minutes that was all, but then he sucked in a louder breath and his eyelids moved.

She was sitting on the floor next to him when he opened his eyes. It took him a couple of tries, but he eventually got them open and pointing in the same direction. He gazed blankly at the ceiling for a moment, then focused, and clearly didn’t recognize it; his eyebrows slowly drew together, and he frowned, and only then did he turn his head a little bit and look around enough to catch her in the corner of his eye.

He saw her, and tilted his head a little farther. “Hmnn,” he said, blinking, and only after a bit more effort did he manage to get both eyes pointed toward her, and finally focused more or less on her.

“You’re an idiot,” she said.

“Nn,” he said, looking sad. She got up and went out to the kitchen, and came back with a glass of water, a bowl of soup, a plate of bread, and silverware. He was staring at the ceiling, looking bleak, and seemed almost surprised when she sat back down next to him.

“Come on then,” she said, and lifted him to sit him up, propping his back against the end of the couch. His metal arm didn’t work at all, so she had to lift it into his lap. It was so heavy she had to brace herself to lift it. His other arm moved only slowly, clumsy and heavy, and he had great difficulty getting the fingers to close around the glass.

She helped him drink, stopping him after only a few swallows, and took the glass back. “Take it easy,” she said.

“Natasha,” he managed to say.

“Why is this what you do when you’re injured?” she asked. “Why do you drag yourself here alone to die?”

He looked at her. “Followed protocol,” he said.

“This isn’t protocol here,” she said. “You don’t die alone in a safehouse I don’t check. You fucking call someone and get your wounds tended to.”

His eyes went a little unfocused, and he struggled to get them back under control. “Not,” he said, “dying.”

“You could have!” she said.

“Secondary collapse,” he said slowly, “damage protocol.”

“No one would have found your body here,” she said.

“Wasn’t fatal damage,” he said. He managed to lift his hand to his face and scrub at it, grimacing; she gave him the glass of water again and he drank a few more swallows before she stopped him.

“It sure as hell looked like it was,” she said.

He was staring at her oddly, not quite making eye contact, and she realized that he must be able to see how upset she was. “It wasn’t,” he said. “I get hurt like that plenty, I know the difference.” He took a deeper breath, stretched his shoulders, managed to move his left hand with a visible wince. “I knew I had to go-- under, torpor,” he said, fumbling with the word, “and you don’t like it when I do it in your house, so I came here instead.”

“Don’t hide from me,” she said, letting herself sit back. “James, don’t-- I don’t like you going into torpor because you don’t _have_ to. If you’d just gotten medical attention we could’ve stopped the bleeding and you could have healed without resorting to a self-induced coma.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know about any of that.” He looked tired and drawn, and as he gained mobility his shoulders were hunching inward.

She made herself breathe slowly in, held it a second, breathed out. “I’m not yelling at you,” she said softly. “I’m just upset.”

He was looking fixedly at his hands now, and she watched him; he was gathering his courage to say something. She waited, not wanting to discourage him from talking. She should have known better than to speak angrily to him when he wasn’t in full possession of his faculties.

He took a sharp breath in, and finally said, “You’re not my handler.”

She sat silent, shocked, for a moment, and watched as he tried and failed to look at her; he couldn’t make himself make eye contact. Instead he just blinked a lot. It was incredibly familiar.

“No,” she said finally, on a soft, long exhalation. “No, I’m not, James. I’m your friend.”

That startled him enough that he managed to look at her, for about two seconds, before he had to look away again. “Yeah?” he said finally.

“Yes, James,” she said.

He bit the insides of his lips, working his mouth as he thought that over, eyebrows drawn together and shoulders still hunched. He was still blinking a lot, like a dog expecting to be beaten.

“Can I touch you?” she asked softly.

He squinted, almost a flinch, and looked up towards her face-- still no eye contact-- and nodded. She shuffled forward and wrapped her arms around him, pulling his head against her shoulder. “I’m your friend, James,” she murmured. “And I worry about you, and I care what happens to you, and I want you to be okay, and I don’t want you to be hurt or scared or alone.”

It took a long time, but eventually he relaxed against her grip, breathing going steadier. Finally he whispered, “Natasha.”

 

______________

 

James sent Lakeisha three more videos over the course of the next month, including a hilarious Robot dance routine and a surprisingly sweet tutorial on how to do the Murder Strut, the distinctive way he walked that had gotten pointed out from several of his surveillance videos. (Apparently it was a byproduct of heavy boots and a too-high center of gravity, and he spent a lot of time in the video discussing, endearingly earnestly, how mobility impairments were no detriment to looking like a total badass.)

He seemed pretty bent on never quite showing his face. “I get the concealing your identity bit,” she finally pointed out, “but I really feel like your looks are a big asset in this project, and hiding that light under a bushel is only harming your viewership statistics.”

James laughed. He’d met up with her at the end of her convenience store shift after she’d let slip that sometimes bums hung around and made her nervous to walk to the subway alone. She had to admit it was really, really nice to be escorted to her subway by a stacked six-foot white dude.

She’d been creeped out the first time he’d shown up at her other job, but he’d proven himself not-creepy in the weeks she’d known him, and despite her certainty that he was definitely hiding some major things from her, she was pretty comfortable with him by now. Comfortable enough that she didn’t mind him knowing which subway stop she had to get off on.

She wasn’t about to bring him by her house or let him meet her kid or anything, but she was thinking about letting him meet Jeremy. They might get along, and from what she did know of James, she knew he wouldn’t judge Jeremy’s various oddnesses.

“So what if I show off stuff that isn’t my face?” he asked, hands in pockets.

“Do not even send dick pics,” Lakeisha said.

“Dick pics,” he repeated, half to himself, then looked horrified. “Wait—  you mean-- no! That’s not what I meant at all! Who the fuck does that?”

“Like everyone,” she sighed. “You can’t put your dick on YouTube.”

He considered that a moment. “Why would I want to?” he asked. “I mean— not that—“ He was stammering a little as he worked through it. “That’s really private,” he concluded. “I wouldn’t— there’s-- a _really small_ subset of people I’d show that to.”

“Good,” she said. “That’s how it ought to be.”

“I just meant,” he said, and gestured at his torso. “I’d take my shirt off.”

“You got a nice body?” she said. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me? You think you can reel viewers in that way?”

“There’s a fair bit of scar tissue,” he admitted, “but I work out a lot and I’m not particularly shy.”

Lakeisha rolled her eyes at him, but then gave him assessing up-and-down. Yeah, he looked like he was in pretty good shape. “You skinny enough that your abs show?” she asked.

He snorted, and hiked up his two, no three, layers of shirts, and god _damn_ okay, he had one of those Greek God lines along his hipbone, and his abs had abs. “Okay,” she said, realizing she’d stopped dead. She’d had no idea, he usually wore more layers than she’d realized, evidently-- none of that had been apparent. She tossed her head, composed herself, and kept walking. “Yeah okay. Just— Okay.”

“I told you,” he said, tugging his shirts back down, “I work out a lot.” He sounded amused, but not smug. “I mean, it’s probably mostly going to appeal to gay dudes, right?”

“I mean, partly,” she said, “but if you’re comfortable with that and aren’t going to fly off the handle—“

“I’m more than fine with that,” James said. “I’ve admired a dude or two in my time, to put it mildly. Be hypocritical to get mad at someone else for doing the same.”

“Really?” Lakeisha looked over at him. “Even with the macho-macho Army shit?”

James grinned. “ _Especially_ with the macho-macho Army shit,” he said. “Man, in my day you could get thrown out for that shit, and it only made it hotter. In one of my training camps, the weather was miserable and I didn’t wanna be there and I think I hooked up with at least three different guys out behind the barracks on various moonless nights.” He shot her a look. “Not that I don’t like chicks, but there’s just somethin’ about illicit dude hookups. I don’t know that I’d even bother now that it’s no big deal and you wouldn’t get in trouble for anything except breaking curfew.”

“Wow,” Lakeisha said. “I— wow, I gotta reconsider a whole bunch of my notion of you.”

He grinned. “I live to surprise,” he said.

“So you’re bi?” She waggled her hand. “That’s what that is, right?”

He shrugged. “I dunno what they call it now,” he said. “Outta practice is what I really am.” He sounded a little wistful. “I’d sorta forgotten about that. It seems like a really long time ago.”

“Wasn’t it?” she asked. She’d figured he was pushing forty, so he’d have mostly been in before the DADT repeal. Though now she thought about it, she always tended to estimate white dudes older than they were. There was a pretty sharp line in the late thirties where, generally, age started to show, where formerly-appealingly-deep-set eyes started looking sunken and strong jawlines started to get a little puffy; he was before that point, but kinda beat up. He might be younger, now she really looked at him. Maybe quite a bit.

He looked sad now. “Yeah,” he said. “It was.”

 

The next video he sent her outdid itself. It was ostensibly a tutorial on how he’d made his metal arm, but it featured close to 45 minutes of raw footage, including a lot of shenanigans in what looked like a museum after hours. He had a cameraman, whose voice revealed that it was the Nat girlfriend person who hadn’t been around and wasn’t mentioned much but was clearly in on this. She didn’t appear in any of the footage, but she operated the camera pretty skillfully. There was also some footage where it looked like she was hiding in a vent or something, videoing out as a— security guard? walked by, and there was James, with no shirt on, hiding among the figures in a diorama, glaring at the camera in between attempts to look like a statue.

The crowning glory of the footage was the shirtless, be-goggled forge scene. “I figure,” James said into the camera, standing there in a pair of low-riding black jeans, his skin waxed totally smooth, gleamingly oiled and artistically smudged with soot here and there, muscles of his right arm bulging as he gestured with the hammer, those Apollo lines of his iliac crest disappearing tantalizingly under the low-slung waistband (some veins popping out, like he’d done a bunch of situps right before the camera rolled, _fuck_ ), “you’re probably gonna want to take some of this and put it in slow-mo. I can’t actually hit the anvil with the hammer because it’ll make too much noise and I didn’t actually get permission to shoot here. But it’ll probably look fine in slow-mo interspersed cuts, right?”

Nat laughed offscreen. “Okay Hitchcock,” she said. “Quit directing and start acting.”

James made a face. “Excuu-uu-uuse me for takin’ this seriously,” he said. “And then you’re over there zoomed in on my abs like you never seen this shit before.”

“I’d be sorry for objectifying you,” Nat said, “but isn’t that literally the point of this entire video?”

“Yeah yeah,” James said. “Anyway. C’mon, we don’t got all night, I ain’t hidin’ in that diorama again.”

His left arm looked normal; Lakeisha could see the scarring he’d talked about, on his chest and shoulder, and when he turned, on his back on the left side. But the arm itself looked reasonably normal. She’d never really seen his left arm before, but it looked exactly like the right one. She watched closely; she’d been so sure he’d had some injury there. It did move a little more stiffly, the muscles didn’t ripple quite normally. Maybe there was nerve damage, maybe it was just the pose, maybe she just couldn’t get a good look. He kept it turned away from the camera and there were no close-ups from that side, neither of the arm nor of the hand.

And then the last bit of footage was him with the metal arm on, wearing— Lakeisha laughed out loud and had to cover her mouth. He was wearing gold metallic short-shorts, with probably a dance belt or something underneath because they weren’t too revealing for all they covered very little real estate.

He was posing like a bodybuilder, hair loose and covering half his face. “I figure you gotta put real cheesy music on this bit,” he said.

“Shut your mouth, you’re prettier like that,” Nat said, and he laughed, a genuine ducked-head wide-open laugh of real amusement, and turned his face away to fix his hair. “Now flex, just like we practiced.” _Bless your heart, Nat_ , Lakeisha thought.

He snickered, back to the camera as he tried to compose himself, and the metal covered half his shoulder blade, in articulated plates; it went up over his shoulder, with the iconic red star on the deltoid. It was a gorgeous piece of costuming or machinery or whatever it was, which he’d actually given no insight into in the video, clearly relying on a cheap prop for all of the ridiculous construction scenes. He had a really nice back, and Lakeisha could see that there was a lot of scar tissue around the edge of the metal, like there really was some kind of— something there, a reason for the metal to end where it did, in apparently multiple layers like it did. He turned back, and made a muscle-man pose, twisted at the waist, looking down with his hair falling in his face, arms bent, showing off traps and lats and biceps and triceps, and the left arm was a mirror image in metal of the right. Whatever he used for the sleeve added no appreciable bulk, and gave his left arm simulated muscle definition identical to that on the right. It even changed shape as he moved-- but not quite like real muscle would. It was so sleek, though, like gleaming liquid metal over flesh, no weird bulky shapes, no visible seams, just the articulated plates. It was mouth-watering how gorgeous it was. This video was going to be unfair, no matter how Lakeisha cut it.

“Don’t focus in on the metal arm,” he said, as the camera zoomed in on his abs. “I don’t need— it won’t stand up to real close scrutiny. Don’t want that out there.”

“Clearly,” Nat said, “of all the things in this view, that’s what I’m gonna focus in on.”

“Well,” he said, “since you nixed the outfit without underwear, there’s not a lot left to look at.”

“Oh,” Nat said, “that’s entirely what the problem is, yes, the fact that I can’t see your dick wiggling around anymore. Trust me, James, you don’t want that on the Internet. I know what I’m about.”

James moved to another pose, though the camera was in close enough that it really was just following the twist and flex of his abs ( _sweet Jesus_ ) as he changed stance. “How’s the scars look,” he asked, sounding uneasy.

“Pretty good,” Nat said. “The foundation really makes them a lot less noticeable in this light. I know it still looked bad in the mirror but that was raking light.”

“Okay,” James said. He put his hands on his hips, the metal fingers settling just like flesh ones. No bulk at all, his metal hand was free of distortion and regular hand-sized, just as nimble-looking. No fingernails, but the tips of his fingers looked like delicately-shaped plates, angled perfectly to match the blunt taper of the fingers on his other hand. His abs flexed as he took a deep breath, then let it out. “I’m ready for my close-up. Are you doin’ a close-up?”

“Dude I am zoomed so far in on your abs I can see the inside of your belly button,” Nat said.

He laughed, stepping backwards a little. “Why’d I even bother hidin’ my face if you weren’t gonna show it?”

“Beats the hell outta me,” Nat said, and certainty crystallized: Nat’s foreign accent, only ever a trace, was gone. She was consciously mirroring James’s accent, pronouncing words exactly the way he would.

What Lakeisha didn’t get was why James wouldn’t want close-ups of the metal arm when it was so clearly gorgeously detailed. Someone had spent days on that, sculpting those plates just so. It was gorgeous, and this entire video tap-danced around that.

Next time she saw him in person, Lakeisha was going to make a point of getting a look at James’s real left hand.

 

_________________

 

Steve stared at his reflection in the window for a long moment before he pulled the curtain shut and turned away. “You need another beer?” he asked Natasha.

“No,” she said, “I should probably stop there.” She had been playing with her phone, but put it away, and Steve bit down on asking whether she was texting Bucky. It never helped, wondering things like that.

“You headin’ out?” he asked. Everyone else had left, one by one, over the last hour or so, ever since they’d wrapped up almost all of the team assignments. Maria Hill had stayed longer than he’d expected, but she’d been friendly lately. He wondered how many of them were being extra-friendly to him lately because they expected he’d be torn up about Bucky going to Natasha instead of him, vs. how many were being nice because Sam had asked them to while he was out of town.

It didn’t do to wonder.

“No,” she said, “I don’t think so, yet. Unless you want me gone.”

“Don’t have anything else to do tonight?” he asked. “Don’t have… anybody waiting?” He tried to stop himself saying it, but it forced its way awkwardly out, and he grimaced. “I didn’t mean that quite how it sounded.”

“I’ve been working on him,” she said, as her phone vibrated quietly. She pulled it out, looked at it, stuck it back in her pocket.

“How’s he doin?” Steve asked quietly.

She shrugged. “He’s okay,” she said. “He scared the shit out of me last week. He can lower his heart rate and body temperature like a goddamn lizard, and he does it when he’s feeling too fucked-up, I think he was taught to do it when he was injured or unstable. But it means his heart barely beats. I came home and there was blood everywhere and he was cold and I couldn’t tell if he was breathing and he didn’t seem to have a pulse. It’s fucking unnerving and I hate it and I genuinely thought he was dead and it scared me senseless.”

“That is terrifying,” Steve said, surprised she’d tell him something like that.

“He was fine,” Natasha said. “He’d been injured but he’d healed it up. I just— there was dried blood everywhere, and he was cold and didn’t seem to have a pulse.”

She was repeating herself; she didn’t look particularly distraught but the repetition was telling. “Natasha,” Steve said. “That sounds really awful. What did you do?”

“Nothing,” she said, “because he was fine. I yelled at him, Steve. I told him he needs a support network. I can’t be everything to him. I know you think I’m just being polite, but I’m acting in self-interest here. He needs to reconnect with you. I can’t be the only one he comes to. I can’t come home and find him dead in my apartment because he had nowhere else to go.”

“No,” Steve said quietly. “You can’t.”

She inhaled slowly, deeply, and let it out in a long sigh, then smiled at him. “So I’m working on him,” she said. She patted the couch next to herself. “Sit with me a bit.”

Steve sat down next to her, unsurprised when she scootched over and pressed her hip into his. “How you been?” she asked.

He shrugged, and put his arm around her, since she seemed to want that. He was getting better about touching people and having it not feel fucked-up. “The usual,” he said. “Enjoying work, at least.”

“Work,” she said dismissively, then laughed. “Like I can talk.”

“Right,” he said. He pulled his phone out. “I admit, I’ve really been enjoying Bucky’s blog. Should I get one, do you think?”

“Oh man,” she said, and he called up the page where Bucky had been doing the Q&A. “You totally should.”

“He insists he’s not Bucky,” Steve said. “Is that because he’s trying to be incognito, or because he thinks he’s really not?”

“I’m not sure,” Natasha said. “You could send him a-- I think they call it a Q, on that site. If you make a blog, you could write in.”

“I should talk to him first,” Steve said. He didn’t bother hiding the pang that went through him, at that. “If he’d-- really talk to me.”

Natasha’s phone vibrated. She pulled it out. Steve couldn’t see the screen clearly, so he didn’t crane his neck to try to make it out. He had _some_ dignity. She made a face, keyed in something (a reply to a text?) and put her phone away. “I’m trying to get him to come over here,” she admitted. “He’s being skittish.”

“Here,” Steve said. He looked around. It seemed… it would be incongruous, he thought, to see Bucky here. But his guts twisted up at the thought of it. “I’d… I mean, he should do what seems right, to him.” He scrolled a little absently, but paused when he found the entry where Bucky had yelled at the people teasing him about being gay for Steve.

 

_q: so you won’t say who you are lol but did you ever have a tragic love affair with steve rogers_

_q: Whether you’re Bucky Barnes or not, it’s been said that when you take contract work you have a standard stipulation that you won’t fight against Captain America. What’s up with that?_

_q: have you ever boned steve rogers_

_a: I’m grouping these together because it brings up something I wanted to address. People keep hassling Steve Rogers about me because of the persistent rumor that I’m Bucky. Think about that for_ one fucking minute _, you fucking assholes. Regardless of who I am and my opinions on this, whether I’m Bucky or Elvis or Jimmy fucking Hoffa, you’re gonna walk up to this guy, this dude who has dedicated his life to service, who literally_ died for his country _, right, and hassle him about his best friend who was killed in action in WWII in front of his face. Like, just forget about anything else in this whole situation, and think about that for a second._

_I promise you, however funny you think your joke is, it’s fucking_ not _._

_I won’t fight Steve Rogers not because I’m in love with him or afraid of him, but because that guy has been through enough shit and I’m not doing anything to him. I’m just not. He’s like, a golden retriever of noble suffering. Why would you punch a golden retriever? I would not punch a golden retriever._

_Number two, I served in the US Army and that’s as specific as I’m getting, and the thing about Captain America is that if you fuck with him you fuck with that. I have few loyalties left but I have that one. I don’t want to fuck with the Army, and I won’t fuck with Cap. Hooah._

_Number three, he could_ kick my fucking ass _, and I’m not suicidal. I’m very good at what I do but he’s better. I’m not fucking around with that. If I had to maybe I could hurt him bad enough to escape with my life, it’s not like I’m scared, I just-- I don’t want to, and it’d be stupid to try._

 

“That’s it,” Steve said. “I gotta respond to that.”

Natasha had been reading over his shoulder, and she laughed. “I can get you a verified account,” she said.

He gave her a considering look. “You think?”

She laughed again. “How do you think he got the one he has? I did that.”

“Do I want to know how?” Steve asked.

She grinned up at him. “Well,” she said. “I got my verified account the regular way. And so I said, look, this guy is who I say he is.”

“And they okayed that,” Steve said. “Really?”

“Not at all,” she said. “They laughed at me and said it doesn’t work like that. And I said, well, this guy’s legally dead but obviously isn’t, and has no official identity, so what can I do to convince you?”

“Well, what did they say?” Steve asked.

She sat back, stretching her shoulders, and glanced at her phone. “I suggested we meet up in person,” she said.

“How’d it go?” Steve asked.

“Well,” she said. “They were skeptical of a meeting, but agreed to it, and were going on about some bullshit, so James and I just… figured out which of their highest-level employees needed to be in on this meeting, and… set it up.”

“Set it up,” Steve said; she was giving him all her “coy evasive” tells and inviting him to disbelieve her. Sometimes she fell into formulaic mannerisms with him, and his background in performance made him find it pretty reassuring. It was fascinating that she did it so much when no one else was present. It was also fascinating that unlike many people, she didn’t generally use it when she was lying.

“It may have involved abducting two of them and bringing them along on a home invasion of the third’s house,” Natasha said. That was what it was-- she was proud of herself.

Steve rubbed his face. “If anyone sees us together in public I don’t know you.”

“It worked, though,” Natasha said, “and nobody pressed any charges, and it actually was great for James-- he didn’t hurt anyone, he got to show off how good he was at the opposite of chaos, and he got to show off how cool his arm is.”

Steve sighed. “I love how your idea of a successful social interaction is that nobody pressed any charges.” But he let her see that the corners of his mouth were turning up fondly.

Natasha grinned wickedly. “It is a good outcome,” she said. “And they gave him his green checkmark, and none of them will ever speak of it. And then, for free, James and I sat down and drew them up a security plan that would’ve cost them thousands from a consultant not as good as we are, so I feel like they won out in the end. One of them had the most ridiculously overengineered and ineffective home security system, I really feel like we did him a huge favor.”

“Well, I’m not breaking into anyone’s house to get a verified social media account,” Steve said.

“You don’t have to,” Natasha said, “I already messaged the guy in question and he’s working on it now.”

“ _Natasha_ ,” Steve said.

“He takes my word for it now,” she said. “He knows I’m as motivated about the truth as he is. We see eye-to-eye, Steve. We’re allies, he and I.”

“I can just apply the regular way,” Steve said.

Natasha’s phone buzzed and she said, “Too late. What do you want your handle to be?”

Steve sighed. “My name, please, and no puns about eagles or freedom or anything, please.”

Natasha typed on her phone, got a response, and then read off the login information while Steve carefully keyed it into his phone.

“Are you gonna start a flame war?” she asked eagerly, pressing up against his arm to read over his shoulder.

“No,” Steve said, and went back to Bucky’s rant and opened a window to reply. He thought a moment, and finally simply wrote, “I’m not a golden retriever,” and posted it.

 

_______________________

 

“I told you,” Lakeisha said breathlessly into the phone.

“Told me what,” James said, blank.

“I told you he’s Bucky!”

There was a brief silence. “What makes you say that?”

“Steve fuckin’ Rogers got an account and started shooting the shit with him,” Lakeisha said. “There’s no way Rogers would do that for anyone else. It’s-- there’s no way.” Something struck her. “Did you see it?”

“No,” James said. He sounded oddly flat. There was a lot of interference on the line, as well, and odd background noises. “I been out.”

“Are you on the subway?” she asked.

“No,” he said, but did not elaborate.

“Remember the one he posted where he called Steve Rogers a golden retriever and said he wouldn’t fight him?”

“Vaguely,” James answered. He barely sounded like himself, though maybe it was the distortion of the bad connection.

“Rogers got a verified account and the first and only thing he posted was to send a Q to the Soldier and say he wasn’t a golden retriever, and the Soldier answered him and they just got into it like they’d known each other a million years,” Lakeisha said. “It’s actually really sweet. Here: Rogers says, _for someone who doesn’t want to fight me you’re treading a pretty fine line, pal_ , and the soldier writes back,” and she laughed and had to compose herself, “ _I can’t help it, I get really nervous when I talk to super hot people who could kick my ass_.” She laughed again. “Come on! That’s totally-- they’ve got to be friends in real life. There’s no way.”

“There’s no way,” James echoed.

“Right?” Lakeisha’s amusement ebbed as she realized that James wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t really rising to it at all. He really ought to be.

Either he already knew all this and had a different take on it, or he really wasn’t okay.

Sometimes that was her first warning sign with Jeremy, that stuff that’d usually have him rolling just sort of slid off him without catching on anything. “You okay, man?”

“I’m all right,” he said, and there was a little life in his voice, like he’d finally just tuned in to the conversation. “I’m-- I’m on a gig, it’s, it’s taking a lot of concentration.”

“A gig,” she said, surprised. “I-- oh, I didn’t know you were working. I thought you were taking time off.” Had he told her that, or had she just assumed it? She really couldn’t remember.

He did laugh then, but it was hollow, flat, and distant. “No,” he said. “I mean. I’m workin’ a lot less than usual. But no, I still-- what I used to do, I still do some of it, just-- independently, consulting stuff.”

“I thought you used to be in the Army,” she said, puzzled.

“Yeah,” he said. “But what I did there-- I do private security consulting. It’s-- I’ll explain some other time, it pays okay and it’s not-- I don’t think I’m explaining it right. I’m sorry, my head’s a couple thousand miles away. If I get some downtime I’ll look at that and I’ll probably laugh my ass off. I just can’t really-- think about it right now.”

“I get that,” Lakeisha said. “I understand, man. Well, hey--”

“Shit,” James said tersely. “I have to go. I’ll be in touch.” And the call ended.

Lakeisha looked at her phone. Data point number umpty-thousand eleventy-ten: James was a weird dude and was Up To Something. She wished she had better hacking access to cell networks, because she’d love to trace that call and figure out exactly where James was.

She was betting, not in New York.

 

________

 

q from Steven_G_Rogers: I’m not a golden retriever.

 

a: Oh. Uh. Hey, Steve. So, maybe they didn’t teach this in school back when you were going, but there’s this thing where you say things to poetically invoke other things, and they’re called metaphors and similes. So, when I say you’re like a golden retriever, I’m using what’s called a simile, intending to evoke an image or mood. Punching you would be somewhat like punching a golden retriever, which is generally a good-natured and sweet-tempered animal with a good heart and a loyal nature. The metaphor breaks down eventually, sure, because you’re not actually an animal or a dog or anything like that. But my point was not that you’re a pacifist or simple-minded, but rather that you’re generally on the side of Rightness and Virtue, so it’s pretty shitty to be in a position opposing you anyway.

I’m sorry if the metaphor thing threw you off. I’ll try to do better next time. That’s what you do, you inspire people to try to do better.

 

q from Steven_G_Rogers: For someone who doesn’t want to fight me, you’re treading a fine line, pal.

a: I can’t help it, I get really nervous when I talk to super-hot people who can kick my ass. You should hear the stupid shit I say to Natasha.

 

q from Steven_G_Rogers: You’d think when they brainwashed you to be a cold killer they’d’ve removed the bit that made you such an asshole too.

a: I’ll answer this once I’ve looked up burn care in my first aid manual because that really, really smarts. I really didn’t expect you to go there.

 

q from Steven_G_Rogers: Told you I’m not a golden retriever.

a: I TOLD YOU HE COULD KICK MY FUCKING ASS. All you people still sending me Qs about this, I fucking TOLD you he could kick my fucking ass. Are you seeing this? Jesus. Physically OR verbally. I’m dead. I’m dead, everybody.

 

q from Steven_G_Rogers: Somewhere in that cryo reanimation unit there was a dial marked “DRAMA” and some idiot technician cranked that thing all the way up and then snapped it off. Jeez, buddy.

a: I’m not even answering these, since I’m dead, I’m just posting them so you all can see how my memory is being disrespected.

 

 


	9. G. I. Blues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky meet up in person, and fisticuffs ensue. Just like I promised.   
> I bet it's not what you expected, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't think of any specific trigger warnings for this but it's a little more violent than most of this story has been so far, and there's mentions of torture, but nothing particularly graphic. Steve throws up.

Steve came to with an astonishing, pounding headache and the deep certainty that he was in a load of shit right now.

It took him a moment to remember why. Right, right. This was what he got for turning his back on secret organizations and attempting to run ops with the Army. He was pretty sure he’d gotten the other guys out, but now he was in the awkward position of being a prisoner to someone who either knew who he was, or had intended to kill him. Because you didn’t render a supersoldier unconscious accidentally with something you didn’t intend to kill a standard human with.

He was tied to a chair, which was laughable— both chair and rope were the kind he could pretty easily snap, he could tell by just shifting his weight— but there was someone in the room with him, and even as Steve’s vision refused to clear up right away (they’d hit him hard enough for brain damage, which was healing up nicely but _absolutely_ would have killed a standard human), he could make out that the dark blur of robe-swathed human was holding some sort of angular metal thing that was definitely a fairly heavy-duty gun.

He blinked a couple of times, and looked down. He’d been wearing a standard Army combat uniform, so the outfit wasn’t a tell. He blinked again, but sure enough, he wasn’t wearing the outfit now. He’d been stripped down to his skivvies, which thank heavens were his own preferred shorts and not the Army-issue tan briefs, and nothing else. Not even socks.

Peachy.

He collected himself a moment, coming to terms with the healing brain damage and unpleasant nakedness, until his eyes could focus. Concrete floor, dim lighting, bare bulb, cold floor on his feet, poorly-ventilated basement smelling of diesel fumes probably from a generator. Distant sounds, nothing in the room but the person sitting across from him with a gun.

He finally raised his head to regard his companion blearily. The man, broad-shouldered, was swathed in long loose robes and had his head wrapped in a scarf or turban, which obscured his face except for his eyes, which were in shadow. He had gloves on his hands, and no skin was visible. The gun was an AK-47 or something similar, nothing fancy but definitely something utilitarian.

Eyes glittered in the shadow as the man watched him impassively.

“Hi,” Steve said. No response. He let the silence spool out for a little bit, then said, “So I got hit pretty hard on the head like somebody pretty convincingly wanted me dead.”

No answer.

“So that’s kinda rude,” Steve went on. Fuck, the guy didn’t speak English. Steve’s head was splitting and he couldn’t remember the Arabic he’d crammed into his skull for this series of missions. “Uhh…ḥawwāmtī mumtil'ah bi'anqalaysūn [my hovercraft is full of eels]?”

The man stared at him, but enough of his face was visible to see that it was incredulity rather than incomprehension. Steve gave him a wry smile. “Sorry, I can’t remember any other phrases and don’t think I learned any that’d be useful.”

“Just as well,” the man said. “Your accent’s fuckin’ terrible.” His English was pure American, his voice hoarse with disuse.

“Hey,” Steve said, covering his shock. “In my defense, I’m tied naked to a chair with a head wound.”

“It’s your own fault if you are,” the man said, and a prickle went up Steve’s spine, a prickle of familiarity, at the voice and the accent and the posture, even if not much of the face was visible. The man watched him, looking impassive. “Don’t you say it. Don’t you say anything.”

Steve’s entire interior went cold, then away entirely, and it took him a moment of wild dizziness to muster enough breath to whisper, “Bucky.”

“Hush,” Bucky said, for it had to be him. There was no one else it could be. “They don’t know that. They’re probably watchin’, or will be in a minute.”

“What are you doing here?” Steve hissed. He was still numb, and he could feel that his hands were shaking.

“Keep your fuckin’ head down,” Bucky murmured. “You’re a terrible fuckin’ actor, Steve.”

How long had Steve been out, that Bucky had had time to infiltrate to this point? And how had Bucky known to come get him? But even as he thought it, through the fog of shock, he realized not a lot of time could have passed. He’d seen this man, with this robe and this scarf, among the men that had attacked them. Bucky had already been there. “What,” Steve tried again, and he couldn’t have raised his head if he’d tried, he was shaking so badly, “what the hell are you doing here?” Because there was only one conclusion to draw, and that was that the rumors that the Winter Soldier was out in the world again, the world’s deadliest assassin, for hire now as a free agent, were true.

Which meant, once again, that they were on opposite sides. It just meant this time that Bucky was there on purpose. Which explained why he hadn’t let Steve talk to him in any proper depth, and definitely not in person.

“Fixing shit, if you hadn’t been in such a hurry to fuck it up,” Bucky hissed. He stood and came closer, looming over Steve. “Really, Steve, the Army?”

Steve closed his eyes and shivered, hard. “I only stopped looking for you because you told me to,” he said, and it came out so quiet and weak.

“I’m going to hit you,” Bucky said. “Closed fist, right hand, across the jaw. Look left a little if you understand me. I want you to slump to your right like I hit you really hard, okay?”

“No,” Steve said plaintively, curling into himself a little.

“Fuck,” Bucky said, sounding annoyed, “c’mon, then I can look you in the face. Roll with it or it’ll look stupid. Five. Four. Three.”

Steve glanced left and saw Bucky’s hand moving, and just let it rock him. With the earlier head injury, it was forceful enough that his vision went grainy and his neck muscles let go. Bucky grabbed him by the jaw as his head lolled and yanked his face up to stare into it from close range.

The headscarf covered his nose and mouth but those were his eyes, pale blue and murky in this dim light. “Stevie,” Bucky said harshly, impatiently, and it went right through Steve like a very sharp, heavy knife. “Shit, Steve, you’re a fucking super soldier and I hit you like a kid. Look at me.”

Steve stared unfocusedly up, tears stinging his eyes. “What are you doing here?” he tried again.

Bucky stared grimly down at him, the set of his jaw apparent even under the headscarf. “I know you were out for a lotta years but after all this time, how are you not better at this?” he asked, and his voice was harsh but his eyes were soft.

“I can’t,” Steve said, and he was really crying now, which would be embarrassing if he had any capacity left to care. “I can’t— not with you.”

“I hope it’s that you’ve learned to act,” Bucky said, and again, he sounded angry but really didn’t look it, “and not that you’re really losing your shit.” He stared into Steve’s face, shaking him a little by the iron grip on his jaw— left hand, so it really was, not iron but metal at least, and a horrifyingly clear recollection of an early schematic of the arm flashed through Steve’s mind with nauseating immediacy. “Look at me. Focus on me. C’mon. Fuck. I shouldn’ta hit you so hard the first time but I hadda put you down, Stevie, this is a delicate op and you’d’ve wrecked it if you caught on.”

Oh. Yeah, okay, he remembered now— it had been this guy who’d put him down, and Steve hadn’t even been worried about blocking the punch effectively because nobody could hit hard enough to be a threat with a bare, empty hand.

Except, of course, Bucky.

Yeah, that’d’ve killed any standard human.

“They don’t know what you are,” Bucky said, sneering. “They don’t know what we got here. They think you’re just some guy. They put me in here to scare the piss out of you, so they’re gonna look in to see if I’m doing that, but they don’t have any English interpreters ‘sides me. Not until later, maybe tomorrow, when a couple more guys are set to show up. So I figure I got a couple hours to fill you in as long as you keep on cryin’ and lookin’ scared, and I sound real mean. Okay?”

Steve blinked at him blankly. In his addled state he was having trouble picking up on Bucky’s words over his tone, which was so at odds with them. Of course it made sense, but the part of his battered soul that just wanted to see Bucky was so hurt by the man’s tone that he was having trouble getting himself under control.

“I get it,” Steve said, and there was snot coming out of his nose and tears from his eyes and he couldn’t fucking keep anything in focus. “Shit, Buck, I gotta puke.”

“Fuck,” Bucky said, letting go of his face and stepping back. “I fucked up. Shit.”

“No,” Steve said, “no, it’s fine,” and he lolled forward and threw up on his own feet.

Well, at least he missed his lap.

Bucky grabbed the back of his neck and held him steady. “I’m sorry, Stevie,” he said. “I fucked up. Can you see?”

“Yeah,” Steve gasped, still retching. There hadn’t been much of anything in his stomach, it was all dry heaves now, but that didn’t stop his body from trying. “Guh. Bucky. I. _Hkk_.”

“Stop tryna talk,” Bucky said. “Just let it out.”

Time gapped.

A murmur woke Steve eventually; it had been going on for a little while, insistent and varied, rising and falling. It was clearly Bucky’s voice, and it confused him, because he knew Bucky was dead.

“Bucky,” he said finally, frowning as he tried to open his eyes. He was blindfolded, or something, he finally realized after a panic where he was convinced he was blind. “What-- Bucky?”

“Shithead,” Bucky said, “you’re gonna blow our cover. C’mon, wake up!”

“I can’t see,” Steve said feebly.

“Baby,” Bucky said, and his voice was very close behind Steve’s ear. “You got a blindfold on, baby. Listen, I’m sorry I hit you so hard. I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so incredibly sorry.” He was so close, murmuring sweetly into Steve’s ear from a proximity of bare inches, so close his breath was palpable on Steve’s neck, like a lover. Steve shivered.

“I couldn’t be mad at you,” he said.

“You’re healing,” Bucky said. “I know your limits, I got the file. I had to know. You won’t have permanent damage. I didn’t think it’d be even this bad. I had to do it, Stevie, I had to.”

“I know you did,” Steve said.

“The other guy who speaks English is coming sooner than I thought,” Bucky said. “He’s gonna make a video with you. Like a ransom video. You understand why I can’t let that happen. So we’re at a crisis point here.”

“People will recognize me,” Steve said, brain catching up.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “So as soon as you can, I’m gonna need you to make a dramatic escape. You’re gonna have to overpower me, maybe knock me out. And if you don’t make it convincing it’ll blow my cover.”

“Wait,” Steve said. “Bucky! I’m not gonna hurt you. Jesus.”

“You gotta, though,” Bucky said. “Listen. And you gotta make the escape stick, because they’ll know what you are then, and if they catch you again they’ll fuckin’ skin you.”

“You’re coming with me,” Steve said stoutly.

“I’m not fuckin’ comin’ with you,” Bucky said. “Jesus, Steve. I’m not the one who’s a captive, here. I walked in here on my own and I’ll walk out on my own.”

Steve considered that. “What?”

“Fury hasn’t told you anything, has he,” Bucky said, and something tickled Steve’s arm-- Bucky’s hair, had to be, brushing by as Bucky let his forehead thunk gently against the back of the chair. “Jesus fuck. He _promised_ me he’d tell you what was goin’ on.”

“Fury,” Steve said. “You _killed_ Fury.”

“Yes,” Bucky said, “and then he hired me.” He lifted his head. “I work for him as a double agent, Steve. He fuckin’ promised me he’d tell you so you didn’t lie around feeling shitty about me being forced to work for bad guys. I don’t, Steve. They’re all spy gigs. I’m here of my own free will and it’s a perfectly good mission and it’s going just fine except you fuckin’ parachuted into the middle of it like an asshole and you’re fuckin’ it up and now I have to save you.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Steve demanded.

Bucky cuffed him gently on the shoulder, pushing himself to his feet. “Attaboy,” he said. “That’s more like it. So you’ve got maybe an hour tops to get your shit together. I figure, you headbutt me in the chin, rip yourself outta the chair, grab the gun, make me give you my shirt and boots, I try to attack you and you clock me good. Good start?”

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” Steve said.

Bucky audibly rolled his eyes. “Christ,” he said. “Either that or you get me killed. If you don’t sell this, they’ll kill me.”

“Come with me,” Steve said.

“Oh,” Bucky said, “because that’ll totally sell them on me not being a double agent. Tell me, are you new at this?”

“I can’t,” Steve tried, and trailed off. “Anybody ever told you you’re a real asshole?”

“No,” Bucky said, “never, not one person ever,” and his accent was so familiar Steve could’ve cried. “So listen. You hit me real good with the rifle butt, just don’t hit my collarbone, I got a weak spot-- then you gotta smash out the door, make a right, go to the end of the hall, go right through anybody who gets in your way. There’s a door. Break through that one, the stairs are to the left. Up two flights, then shove open the emergency door, it’ll trip an alarm but that’s what you want. Don’t go through that door! Go up one more flight, make a right down the hall, you’ll be on the roof. Stop and put my boots on, then you can make the jump to the next building with a running start. You’re looking for the two-storey building to your, uh--- it’ll be on the left. It’ll be a hard jump but you can make it. From there, we’re about four miles out of the nearest town. I got a stash just off the highway, look for a stolen wrecked American hum-vee and the cache is ten paces off the left of the rear bumper, under a rock. There’s clothes in there and a burner cellphone in a waterproof box, you can use that to get help. If the phone’s dead there’s a little jump pack in there too.”

Steve absorbed that for a moment. Yeah ok. Time to stop protesting so much, Bucky had clearly planned this out. “Door, right, hall, door, stairs left, two flights, open door, one more flight, right, roof, jump, four miles, hum-vee and a rock.”

“Yes,” Bucky said.

“Was that stash for you to use to get out?” Steve asked.

“It was one of several possibles,” Bucky said. “I got others, don’t worry about ‘em. Don’t try to fix the hum-vee, if it’s not booby-trapped it’d be a miracle.” He moved slightly farther away. “There’s pants in the stash. Don’t steal these pants, I don’t got spares here and your old ones won’t fit my fat ass. But you need the boots to get there. You’ll get sunburnt but I know you can heal it up. Just take the shirt to keep the damage under some control. You don’t got time to wait for dark.”

“OK,” Steve said.

“I’m gonna chase you,” Bucky said. “If you don’t incapacitate me, I’m pretty much duty-bound to chase you and try to get you back. Don’t let me. You gotta sell it. I can’t afford to get made.”

“I gotta see your face,” Steve said.

“What, right now?” Bucky asked.

“Yeah,” Steve said.

Bucky sighed, and came closer and yanked the blindfold off roughly. “They can’t hear us,” he said, bending over and getting in Steve’s face, “but they can see us.”

Steve stared up at him. Bucky had a headscarf, pulled down away from his face, but he could see the ends of Bucky’s long hair where it was tucked behind his ears. And he could see Bucky’s mouth, his familiar mouth, and his eyes, and the way there were just barely crinkles at the corners, laugh lines still there, and God he could stare at him forever.

“You’re supposed to look mad at me,” Bucky reminded him gently, and grabbed him by the jaw.

“Yeah okay,” Steve said dazedly.

“I guess you’re faking being worse-off than you are,” Bucky said, surveying him grimly. “You okay to do this? We only got like a maybe one-hour window before the guy shows up or is close enough that when they call him he’ll help us try to recapture you.” He turned Steve’s face, looking him over calculatingly. “I had the blindfold on your face so they couldn’t see how fast you’re healing. Under the blood you’re mostly cleared-up.”

“I can do it,” Steve said. “In a minute. Just lemme look at you.”

“We really don’t have time for that,” Bucky said.

“Guess we know you don’t really have any implanted triggers left,” Steve said.

Bucky sucked on his teeth so he wouldn’t smile. “Guess we do,” he said. “Guess we could hang out. I won’t be back to the city for another month or so I think. But I’ll look you up when I am.”

“That’s all I get?” Steve said.

“We can do the dramatic reunion then,” Bucky said, “and make out and cry in each other’s arms and alla that shit. I can’t right now, I’m pretending I never seen you before.”

“Make out,” Steve said.

Bucky was working as hard not to laugh as Steve had ever seen him, and he’d seen that particular sight a lot in very, very distant days that it was an exquisite agony to remember like this. “Or whatever,” he said, doing a spectacularly bad job at feigning contempt.

Steve was still giddy enough that he burst out laughing. “Don’t ever quit the dayjob and try acting,” he said.

“You mock me,” Bucky said, “shit, we’re doin’ this now.” He grabbed Steve by the jaw and yanked him upward. “Get your arms free and hit me.”

“I can’t,” Steve wheezed, still laughing too hard.

Bucky dropped him and moved forward aggressively, looming over him, and put a hand around behind him and snapped the strut the rope holding him to the chair was wound through. “I’m serious,” he growled. “Jesus, Stevie. Fuckin’ _do it_! Headbutt me in the goddamn face already!”

Steve stared up into Bucky’s magnificent, unshaven, slightly pissed-off face-- he had a smattering of freckles across his nose, he’d gotten some sun lately-- and planted his feet on the floor and shoved himself up, skull-first, into Bucky’s jaw.

 

Ten eventful minutes later, Steve was sprawling on sandy concrete in a t-shirt, undershorts, and an unlaced pair of boots, blood streaming down his face and Bucky’s headscarf clutched in his other hand. Bucky had got him pretty good with an elbow, but it had been the human elbow, not the robot one, thankfully.

Bucky sprawled next to him, face even bloodier. “Fuck,” he panted, “you asshole, I was right about boots. You can’t make this jump without boots.”

“Dunno,” Steve said, “socks woulda made that a lot better.”

“I think you’ll find you’re better off than me,” Bucky said, “but that’s good, it’s plausible, that’s how you gave me the slip. You don’t gotta punch me once more, they can’t see us right yet, it’s why I had you go this way.” He rolled over and sat up.

Steve hauled himself up and crawled to Bucky, grabbing him around the shoulders. “Lemme see you, you goddamn fuckin’ jerk.”

“Make it snappy,” Bucky said, but his voice had gone uneven, and he held onto Steve’s shoulders like he was drowning. “Christ, Stevie, I missed your fuckin’ face.”

“I wasn’t alive without you,” Steve said. “Christ, Bucky, I tried, but it just--”

“You’re a dumb asshole,” Bucky said. “You gotta go. Let go of me and get outta here, I’m gonna pretend you knocked me out.”

“I don’t need much of a headstart,” Steve said.

“They’ll have guns, dumbass.” Bucky held him tightly enough that his shoulder bones creaked, and hauled him up, scrambling to his own feet as well. “Go. Go now.”

“Let go first,” Steve said, with a painful laugh; it was Bucky’s death grip on him that was keeping him from moving, after all, but he didn’t want to.

“Jesus,” Bucky said, and pulled back to stare into his face for a moment. “Jesus fuck, Rogers.” He made a pained face, then grabbed Steve by the back of the neck, kissed him hard on the mouth, and shoved him violently, so that he himself fell backwards and sprawled on the ground.

A distant shout told Steve that it wasn’t a moment too soon; he ducked, then took off like a rabbit, pantsless and with his face burning.

_______________________________

****  
  


The ping was waiting when Lakeisha finally sat down at her computer, after days of running around. It was a while since she’d had time to log in to her obscured sites, but there she was-- AE340. With a link. Lakeisha followed it to a darkweb forum posting where a user had left negative feedback for the Winter Soldier, alleging that he had botched an op.

And the Winter Soldier had written a rebuttal, citing a contract violation.

Lakeisha had never been one of the first people to pick up on shit like this. She wasn’t a news-of-the-minute type. She was more an analyst. So she read with interest how the discussion had shaken out. People seemed to be siding with the Soldier, whose contracts were very reasonable and had only a couple of exclusions, two major points of which had been violated in the course of the op. But popular opinion also seemed to hold that perhaps the Soldier, as a Cold War relic, lacked modern efficacy, and perhaps ought to retire gracefully.

At least, the general conclusion went, he wasn’t working for the government, as too many *cough*BlackWidow*cough* so often revealed themselves to be. He worked with her a lot, but didn’t seem to share her double agent status. It was generally held to be an un-fuck-with-able testament to his overarching badassery that he wasn’t a total fucking vegetable, given the various things that kept turning up about what he had spent seventy years doing.

And oh, more things kept turning up.

W: hey when you heading overseas?

A: next month! i’m counting down the days.

W: don’t let anybody talk you into being a drug mule

W: i swear to god every time i hear about somebody going overseas everybody is trying to get them to smuggle drugs

W: i know it seems like easy money but for real do not

A: I know! I know. No fear. Not smuggling data either. I’m not making any physical contact with anybody not even via dead drop. Nothing.

W: Good. Don’t. You’ll have all the physical contact you can stand over there. Seriously I’m worried for you.

A: My mom is worried enough about me, don’t you start.

W: Ain’t enough worry in the world, punkin.

A: I will be good. I promise. I’m mostly going for school things, and I’ll do the school things. I probably won’t be able to get far enough to find anything really crazy, and if I do, I got an innocent face.

W: Innocent face won’t protect you against the real baddies.

A sent another link, which was a file cache somebody had dug up in an alleged hidden missile silo in Ohio, and there had been a great deal of material about an obscurely codenamed project featuring behavior modification psychologists, cryogenic facilities, and neurological researchers. And one of the things the file contained was a badly deteriorated video tape, which somebody had attempted to digitize. Most of it wasn’t very watchable, but several segments were clear enough to see a man shackled to a table, one arm clearly a prosthetic, being interrogated. There were several segments with close-ups on his face to show his responses to stimuli.

It wasn’t clear, it was fuzzy and degraded and had badly-distorted audio, but the face in question was sort of recognizable: if it wasn’t James with a buzz cut and a swollen face, it was someone with an eerie resemblance to him.

And whoever it was, he was undeniably undergoing torture. Lakeisha’s stomach turned and she had to stop watching once the vivisections started. She read a transcript instead, which was bad enough.

She decided not to send a link to James. Or ask him about it.

****  
  


______________________________________________

****  
  


“I gotta work harder, though,” James said, out of nowhere. He was sitting on the fire escape, shirtless, smoking a cigarette-- mostly, playing with the ashes, and Natasha supposed nicotine didn’t do much to him anymore. When she smoked, she did so for the look of it, and the things it made people assume about her; he clearly was just doing it for the fidgeting and muscle memory.

“Your reputation took a hit,” she said. “I don’t know why, there was just suddenly chatter, speculation you were losing your edge-- more than the usual.”

“Steve,” James said. He sighed, sat back, a gorgeous little display of lean muscle in his abdomen as he stretched his feet out in front of him.

“What about him?” Natasha asked.

“He fucked up my last op,” he said. “The one in the Middle East.”

“I wondered if you guys had overlapped,” she said. Steve had returned smug and sunburnt, with some pretty good stories and a healthy dose of obnoxious Army hoo-rah macho bullshit, the kind Natasha mostly enjoyed poking holes in but in Steve’s case had let slide until it wore off on its own.

“Yeah,” James said. He scowled at the cigarette in his hand. “So I’m workin’ with this group, you know how I run job offers by Fury and he and I figure out where to apply pressure, right? And I’m with this group mostly to scare them the fuck away from HYDRA, because the last fuckin’ thing we need is for HYDRA to get their tentacles wound up even more in the Middle East-- so that’s going fine and then suddenly the fuckin’ Rangers show up, right?”

“Ohh,” Natasha said. The Rangers were the Army’s elite special forces and that was exactly who Steve had been doing training and exercises with, and of course.

“So I got a clause in my contract that I try to avoid any particular fuckery with the US Army,” he said, “and a rock-solid clause that I don’t fuck with Captain America, but there he is, he’s just fuckin’ parachuted straight into the middle of my fuckin’ op, and literally everything is going to get wrecked.”

“What’d you do?” Natasha asked, horrified. “Did you pitch a diva fit over your contract in the heat of battle?” It would’ve been justified, but it was a nightmare for anybody, especially the weirdly paradoxical subset of covert ops superstars. If you don’t pitch a fit, people figure they can walk all over you; if you pitch a fit and leave them hanging under fire, nobody ever wants to work with you again. It was a tough spot to be in.

“I punched him the fuck out,” James said, “before anybody recognized him or he recognized me.” He waved a hand. “I wasn’t dressed flashy, I was in a thobe and ghutra because I’m not a fuckin’ noob. So he didn’t know who I was, nobody there did except the guys in my group who’d hired me.”

“You punched him out,” Natasha said.

“He did his noble thing and got the other guys out,” James said, rolling his eyes. “It was great. But he wasn’t going to make it out on his own, so I had to punch him out before he figured out who I was, and then he was a prisoner, and I had to figure out how to get him outta there without anybody catchin’ on.”

“Ohh,” Natasha said. She considered. “Couldn’t let on, hm?”

“Christ,” he said, “they’d’ve sold him to HYDRA so fast your head would spin, and me with him if I’d fussed.”

“So you had to pretend you didn’t know him,” Natasha guessed.

“I had to let him beat me in a fight, and escape,” James corrected her, “and then pitch a hissy about my contract.”

“Oh dear,” she said. He flicked the cigarette butt vindictively off into thin air.

“So they wound up thinkin’ I was a little bitch,” James said glumly, slumping in the chair, lacing his fingers together over his belly, “and I think it made them respect HYDRA less too, which had been my point the whole time-- like, I’m a product of that thinking, it’s not useful and it’s only short-term successful and all-- but it was kind of a wash, I barely made it out alive, they stiffed the fuck out of me, and I lost a shitload of cred.” He sighed, rolling his head over to look at her. “And,” he added, “I had to give the location of my emergency escape stash to Steve so he could make it out alive, so it was just a clusterfuck all over. Had to give him my boots!” He gestured widely. “So then I had to use his, and he wears stupid boots, like some kinda idiot who never went through Infantry Basic. I figured he was with the Rangers, they’d give him jump boots, right?”

“You’d think,” Natasha said, amused. James was in Aggrieved Storytelling Mode, which was one of her favorite modes of his.

“No! He had bullshit boots like he’s gonna prove somethin’ with ‘em.” James sighed extravagantly, subsiding with a violent gesture. “I ask you. Steven fuckin’ Rogers. Never really did a tour with the Infantry, so he doesn’t really understand about fuckin’ _boots_. What a fuckin’ nancy.”

Natasha laughed, but was seriously contemplating it. “You should probably stick to doing ops with me for a while then,” she said. “With your reputation precarious you can’t risk going out with no backup.”

James breathed in, let it out, stared grimly at the sky. “It’ll make it worse,” he said. “It’ll really convince ‘em I’ve lost my edge, if I can’t do solo gigs anymore.”

“You’re not wrong,” she said, sucking on her teeth as she thought about it.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, waving a hand. “It’s nothin’ worse than I deal with every time one of them helpful freedom-of-information types digs up more info about me gettin’ tortured and brainwashed and whatever.”

“Still,” she said. She’d worked solo for many years, but much of that time she’d had at least someone she could count on for an extraction. She’d sort of assumed he’d use her for that, or set up an arrangement with Fury, but it really didn’t sound like he had. “Who handles your total bug-out situations?”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Sister, if I’m buggin’ out, I bug out on my own,” he said.

“Your backup, though,” she said. “Who does your backup?”

He shrugged, and her uneasy suspicions were confirmed. “James,” she said, “I’m not going to lecture you about this, it’d be hypocritical, but the number of ops I worked with genuinely no backup are really small and I still don’t think they were good ideas.”

“You think I could just call SHIELD?” he said. “That’d go over great.”

“Fury hasn’t set anything up for you?”

He shook his head. “You think I’d trust Fury with that? I don’t even give him my real dead-drop bank number. I got a dead drop set up to make a dead drop through like eight proxies. I don’t trust that guy at all.”

Of course he had no reason to trust Fury, beyond her say-so. “I see,” she said. “James, I’ll set something up.”

“I don’t need that,” he said. “Jeez, I shouldn’t have brought it up. I just thought you’d like a good Steve Rogers story.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a short chapter but I'll make up for it with another one soon, I sorta figured keeping chapters thematically uniform is more important than making them a uniform length. Of course, my opinion on this varies wildly, but hey. Consistency isn't my strong suit.


	10. If I Can Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam Wilson really is a superhero, after all.  
> Warning: Suicidal ideation and discussion of suicidal ideation. (No attempts are made.)

Sam wasn’t surprised when people hung around after his talk. Even before he’d wound up sort of famous, there were always people who wanted to talk afterward. He’d come prepared for this, had listed the end time of the session over an hour earlier than he really meant to leave.

He wasn’t sure what to make of the one guy with the scars and the prosthetic arm, though. He didn’t come up and mill around with the others, didn’t hang back looking shy. He was just sitting patiently at the edge of the front row with his metal arm to the wall, staring like he had lasers in his eyes.

Youngish black dude, had introduced himself with a name Sam hadn’t caught during the intros, but Sam had caught that he’d been armored cav, and it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure that a prosthetic and a bunch of facial scarring on the same side said IED all over. Not too hard to piece together what had happened to the guy, and what he’d been through, and it wasn’t like it being straightforward made it any less awful.

But the guy made no move to stand, didn’t come over, didn’t insinuate himself into any discussions, didn’t come up. Sam finally called out to him. “You okay, man?” No answer. “I figured you were hangin’ back to talk to me.” He walked over closer. The guy watched him approach.

Finally, when he was standing in conversational distance, the guy stood up a little stiffly. “Yeah,” he said, softly, “I had somethin’ I wanted to talk to you about, but it ain’t VA business so I figured I’d let all that finish up.”

Sam laughed. “The VA thinks everything is their business,” he said, “so that’d be a good trick.”

The guy cracked a smile. “True,” he said. “An’ I guess my question is VA-related. If the Winter Soldier is who they say he is, the VA would figure it’s their business, right?”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “Probably,” he said. He’d made similar arguments, actually, and been laughed at. “You think I know much about him?”

The guy looked around the room. It wasn’t empty, but the others were folding up the chairs and chatting among themselves. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I got no other in to anyone who might. And I-- I got reason to believe you’d know more about the guy than most people.”

That was a little creepy, or maybe wild speculation. It was hard to know which. Sam was pretty good at just giving people the patient waiting-for-you-to-make-sense face regardless, so he did.

“Long story,” the guy said, “but short version: my sweet, kind, precious angel of a baby sister is fascinated with conspiracy theories. Somehow she’s got in her head that the Winter Soldier is this poor lost cinnamon roll who needs saving.” He made a face. “I look on the Internet a fair bit, I know she ain’t the only one. There’s a lot of ‘em. And she’s like, their ringleader. And that’s fine.” He gestured with his good hand. “That’s fine, she’s a smart girl and she does what she likes. She’s very smart, she’s the brains in the family. But she ain’t got a ton of sense.”

“We all know the type,” Sam said, wondering where this was going.

“Me,” the guy said, “I figure, superheroes and metahumans and whatever, that ain’t my business and I don’t wanna know, right?”

Sam laughed. “A sensible approach,” he said.

“Granted,” the guy said, “maybe if I was young and whole I’d be more into it. But at this point, I done most of what I could do, and got blown up for my trouble. I’m all set. My sister? No. She wants to know everything. She thinks it’s her duty to know everything. She thinks maybe she’s an investigator, she’s gonna find out the truth. And like, the truth will set us free, maybe. I’m not sure where she’s going with this, I can never really follow.”

“She sounds fun,” Sam said, already formulating a good response about fears of the Winter Soldier, which would be reassuring without revealing that Sam really knew anything specific.

“Well,” the guy said. “She is. But. So she’s been following your search for him, specifically, and there’s surveillance tapes and hotel check-in records and stuff. I mean, serious detective things, the Internet really wants to know why you were in Vienna on August the fifth etcetera.”

Sam’s blood went a little cold. Was it the fifth he’d been in Vienna? It was whatever the Friday had been. The seventh, more like. He hadn’t thought anyone had tracked him. Coincidence, then; this guy’s sister didn’t know anything. But it was close. “Me,” he said.

“Yes, you,” the guy said. “You and Rogers, you’re tight, and Rogers has been on the radar the whole time, doing stupid shit with Stark, but you tend to pop up and vanish, and some people are pretty obsessed with figuring out where you go, because you’re a kind of-- you’re mostly an Avenger, but you also have a real life, and that means you do interesting things.” The guy paused, and laughed. “Your face. I’m sorry, dude, I’m starting to sound like her. This is what it’s like, living in that house. I see you zoning out. I go a little glazed, like, why the world cares where this guy’s momma live, if he doesn’t visit her on her birthday that don’t mean he’s enmeshed in a vast government conspiracy.”

Sam stared at him. He _had_ missed his mother’s birthday. This was the creepiest spy thing he’d ever had happen. It had to be a coincidence but--

“Real talk though, you shoulda at least called her,” the guy said.

“Moms are important,” Sam said woodenly. What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck.

The guy was watching him closely. “I figured she was full of it,” he said, and it was sort of too late for Sam not to look creeped-out. “Well. Then maybe this isn’t a dumb question to ask. Y’all apparently stopped looking for this Winter Soldier a couple months ago. Just, called it off. Like it had all been a false alarm. And the Internet went nuts with conspiracies, and everyone’s general consensus was that the Soldier was working covert for the Avengers now.”

Sam shook his head. “That’s above my pay grade,” he said. “I don’t do covert, I don’t know about covert, and I definitely, definitely don’t comment.”

“I didn’t figure you’d _tell_ me,” the guy said, mildly scandalized. “Christ, man, I ain’t askin’, you don’t know me from Adam. But if he’s workin’ covert, he’s way way deep-- apparently he’s doing mercenary gigs and it’s well-documented and he’s out there in the world. But the Avengers aren’t lookin’ for him anymore, or if they are, they turned it over to the Black Widow, and the Falcon isn’t workin’ on it anymore.”

“Fascinating series of conclusions,” Sam said, noncommittal (or trying to be).

“Yeah, yeah,” the guy said. “Get to the point. Well, my point. My sister, remember her? She’s the one who cares about all this.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, and clearly he’d already had the window open, because he unlocked the screen and there was a photo up.

It was a photo of a black woman and a white man, and the black woman was young and round-faced and curvy, and the white man was tall and dark-haired, in a leather jacket, long hair pulled back, standing next to the girl. And he-- if he wasn’t Barnes, he was his spitting goddamn image.

“I only had my phone,” Jeremy said, “but this is a guy she hangs out with sometimes and they make silly pretend videos where he pretends he’s the Winter Soldier. Only in the videos, he never shows his face. And I was wonderin’ why, especially when I saw the guy. I figured he had scars or he was ugly or somethin’, but he isn’t, he doesn’t. And here’s the thing.” He swiped to another picture, which was slightly blurry, but it was closer in on the white man.

Sam had been trained to recognize people, now-- he hadn’t needed it for the Army, but this spy bullshit had required it. So he looked at the spacing of the eyes, the position of the cheekbones, the proportions of the jaw, the position of the ears-- things that makeup couldn’t change, things age only changed slightly.

That was Barnes, all right.

“Here’s the thing. He’s awful nice, walks my sister home sometimes.” The guy swiped to another picture, further out, showing the two walking next to each other, then touched the screen-- ah, a video. They were walking, clearly talking. Barnes had an unmistakable posture and stride-- it wasn’t his murder walk, but he certainly carried himself with a deliberateness that most people didn’t. Certainty crystallized: it was absolutely him, unmistakable in motion.

“But my sister has awful taste in people,” the guy concluded. “Awful. I don’t know if I’m hoping you’ll say this guy secretly really is who he’s pretending to be, or not, because either way, I don’t trust him and I’m pretty sure my sister’s going to let him hurt her.”

“I feel that dilemma,” Sam said. _Bucky, what the fuck_.

“He’s a pretty white boy, is the thing,” the guy said. “And she’s had some pretty up close and personal experience with the kind of shit pretty white boys will pull on a too-sweet darkskinned girl who just wants to be everyone’s friend. You feel me?”

“I feel you,” Sam said.

“So she says to me of course he’s not really the Winter Soldier, when I joked about it,” the guy said. “But then I notice she’s acting funny, and I lurk on her messageboards and she’s asking some really pointed questions, y’know? Like, if she ain’t suspicious, why’s she checkin’ up so much?”

Sam nodded a little. Looking at the photo, the sister had to be in her early twenties, maybe even mid-twenties. She wasn’t a kid. She would’ve been, though, when this guy was in service and on his way to getting blown up. He hadn’t been there for her, for sure, when whatever it was had happened to her. Didn’t take a genius to think that one through, and just like the injury, it being straightforward didn’t make it any less awful. “The overprotective older brother thing only works sometimes,” he said. “She’s a grown woman, she’s gotta be able to live her life. I don’t got official clearance from anybody official to say anything, but I’ll hint to you that the rumor that the Black Widow has taken over being in charge of the whole Winter Soldier thing is probably true.”

“She’s a grown woman,” the guy said, “but this is exactly the kind of thing she’s gone wrong with before.”

“Right,” Sam said, “but if she’s smart, she’ll also learn. Listen,” he went on, before the guy could talk. “I can’t tell you either way if that guy is who he’s pretending he either is or isn’t. What I can tell you? The Winter Soldier is not running around as an uncontained threat. I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ about who he’s workin’ for, because I don’t know. But it is true, I’m not lookin’ for him anymore, because he’s not in the wind. Somebody knows where he is and knows he’s not a threat to the general populace. So whether that guy in that photo is him or not doesn’t matter. Treat him the same either way, is my advice. If you think he’s up to no good, you go and you talk to him. Or, you trust your sister, who is, as you mention, a grown woman, and has some experience at how these things can go wrong.”

“The Winter Soldier is not a threat,” the guy said.

“Not to civilians,” Sam said. “We know enough to know that.”

“So I could go up to this guy and just say anything to him,” the guy said.

Sam held up his hands. “I am not telling you to abandon common sense,” he said.”The guy probably isn’t him, which means he’s probably a little nuts.”

“She says she ain’t suspicious,” the guy said, “but he’s got real guns, he nebulously works in security consulting, he has a dead man’s face, and his absences correspond with confirmed gigs the Winter Soldier takes.”

“All the more reason to trust your sister,” Sam said, alarmed. “Because if he’s not really him, that’s a pretty weird guy who isn’t gonna react well to a strange dude coming in and telling him what to do or not.”

The guy swiped back to the video. “She’s not flirting,” he said. The woman was walking normally, laughing but not leaning in, not swaying toward the guy at all; it was inconclusive, but perhaps to someone who knew her it would be more evident. “She’s not leadin’ him on, or nothin’ like that. But that didn’t stop the other guy. She trusted him too much.”

Sam’s heart broke just a little, and he said, “Listen to me, man, you gotta trust her.” Looking at the man’s face, Sam reached a conclusion. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, found the little stash of business cards he kept behind his insurance card. “Here’s my number. Talk to your sister. If she thinks it’s really him, if you think she’s in danger, you call me. But don’t go givin’ that out, that’s my real number. Somebody got Steve’s and it’s a real pain in the ass now.”

The guy took the card, expression a little stunned. “Oh,” he said.

“You can call me if you’re havin’ troubles, too,” Sam said. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t do this, he’d held out through all the other terrible sad stories. But this was too much. “It’s okay. Just-- y’know. I’m more an Avenger than a counselor now. If you got Winter Soldier issues, I’m your man.”

 ****  


____________________________

 ****  


“I’m aware,” Nick Fury said, “that Barnes is not pleased with me.”

Natasha grinned inwardly; Nick had managed to get the drop on her. She turned slowly on her heel, unconcerned. “I should’ve ordered you a coffee,” she said. She’d pinged him, two days before, and he hadn’t acknowledged but then she hadn’t used an alarm code or anything. He was sitting at her favorite table in her favorite coffee shop. And she never sat at that table, she just liked it best, liked to look at it, and sat there very occasionally when she felt safe.

“I got one,” he said, tilting his head, and sure enough there was a coffee sitting on the table next to him.

“He didn’t actually say anything about it to me,” she said, and sat in her favorite chair, across the table from Nick.

“So what’d you ping me for?” Nick asked.

“He has no backup,” she said. “I feel like that’s pretty irresponsible.”

“He works on his terms,” Nick said. “I can’t do much about that.”

“Why is he not pleased with you?” Natasha asked. “It might be related.” She held her mug between her hands and sipped carefully from it. Oh, this place was so nice. She rarely let herself come here. She didn’t get to be the sort of person who had habits, not sincere ones. It spoke volumes about his understanding of her that Nick had noticed this place and thought to approach her here.

The kind of volumes that would upset her if Nick were an enemy, but he wasn’t, and she’d come a long way since that had begun to change.

Fury did not fidget with his mug, but eyed it. It was full, and looked maybe still too hot to drink. He’d only just beaten her here. That helped her recover what little aplomb she was missing (it wasn’t really that embarrassing to be caught out by Fury, after all). “I didn’t tell Rogers that Barnes was working for me.”

She swallowed, and set her cup down. That was actually pretty justified; Steve had fucked up James’s op. What was interesting was that James had assumed Steve wouldn’t know. “I assume you had a reason,” Natasha said.

“Well,” Fury said, “I had kind of been saving it. You know I usually need something, when I go up against Cap. He’s not my easiest customer.”

“I don’t find him hard to deal with,” Natasha said.

“He trusts _you_ ,” Fury groused.

“Well,” she said. “You were ‘saving up’ some information that would really affect him, instead of telling it to him. It’s kind of… hard to win him over like that. He’s pretty difficult to hide stuff from.”

“I know,” Fury said, grimacing. “I know. I was all set with it, had my ducks in a row, and then he ran off and joined the goddamn Army.”

“And you don’t really have an in with them,” Natasha said. She did, sometimes. But a lot of that was down to still being an active field agent. And not being dead.

“No,” Fury said. “I tried to get through to him but he screens his calls pretty aggressively.”

“Mm,” Natasha said. She picked up her mug again. “Has James expressed his displeasure?”

“No,” Fury said, “he hasn’t. But he’s justified.”

She contemplated the surface of her drink. “He has complained to me,” she said, “but not about you. I think he… had sort of expected you not to tell Steve.” She raised her eyes to Fury’s face. “I don’t know how that makes you feel, but it makes me feel pretty sad for him.”

“I guess that is pretty sad,” Fury said.

“He just expects to be lied to,” Natasha said. She pulled her feet up and curled into the chair, which she had been resisting doing, but it was her favorite chair, and she did not allow herself to sit in it ever, and she was there now. The comfort helped a little. “That’s one of the things it took me a long time to get over,” she admitted finally. “The feeling that if I were lied to, it was only justified and what I deserved.”

“Don’t,” Fury said, sounding pained.

“Sometimes it _is_ justified,” she said, with a little shrug. “You have to be ready for that and armor your heart for it.” _After all,_ she did not need to say, _you didn’t tell_ me _you weren’t dead._ “It’s not usually personal. And if you’re ready for it, you might survive it.”

“Do you think he expects you to lie to him?” Fury asked.

“He’s not a fool,” she said bleakly. It could happen. If something came up and she had to, of course she would. She wouldn’t betray him to anyone, but she'd keep him in the dark on something to prevent him countering her.

She didn’t know if he’d do the same in return, though. He had demonstrated stubborn loyalty that was misplaced in his sort of field.

Not everything was a calculation for him, like it was for her.

And even her rock-solid self-assurance that she wouldn’t betray him was based on a calculation, that nothing was worth that. There was a balance sheet, and James himself took up an enormous chunk of space on it-- but there was still a balance sheet.

“Do you lie to him?” Fury asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I haven’t yet,” she said. “It would be costly, if I did. But if there’s one thing I’ve lived long enough to learn, it’s keeping up on the price of things.”

“He’s pretty expensive,” Fury said.

“To me,” she said, “yes. He has a great deal of value to me.” She looked over at him. “Everything has a price,” she said wearily.

“I think that’s true no matter who or what you are,” Fury said. “You’ve just had less latitude to lie about it to yourself than most.”

“True,” she said, consoled.

 ****  


______________________________

 ****  
  


When Sam got home he was gonna lie on his couch until he died.

No, he was gonna eat a half a gallon of ice cream, all the sliced deli meat in the fridge, and _then_ he was gonna lie on his couch until he died.

No-- no, he was gonna take a shower until his skin fell off, _THEN_ eat everything in the fridge _and freezer_ while _on_ the couch, and _THEN_ get into _BED_ until he died.

That was the plan.

He unlocked the door and came in and took his shoes off and flipped on the kitchen light and leapt _six fucking feet in the air_ because there was a _fucking murder zombie_ in his fucking _kitchen_ Jesus _fuckin’_ Christ what the _fuck_ \--

“Yo,” the murder zombie said, stepping back a pace, palms outward, and one of them was made of fucking metal, a metal fucking murder zombie, “yo, calm down a sec, I’m not here to murder you,” and the bastard was fucking laughing.

“Fuck,” Sam said, and he really had no idea how much of that had been out loud, “why the _fuck_ you in my kitchen in the fuckin’ _dark_ , who the fuck _are_ you and-- wait a minute.”

It was Bucky fucking Barnes, was who it was, and Sam should not have been so surprised.

“I’m not a murder zombie,” Bucky said, still laughing, and his eyes crinkled when he laughed and he was astonishingly good-looking, which Sam had really not picked up on at all in any of this and a whole bunch more shit about Steve suddenly made sense. “I just need a haircut.”

Sam leaned against the kitchen wall, clutching at his chest. “You scared the fuck outta me,” he said. “Jesus fuckin-- you scared the _fuck_ outta me.”

“I’d apologize,” Bucky said, “but that’s kinda expressly what I came here to do, so--”

“Why, though,” Sam asked, letting himself slide further sideways, voice weakening. “Why you do me like this. Why.”

“You’re Steve’s best bro,” Bucky said. “I had to find out what kind of a deal you got. Like, what your deal is.”

Sam straightened up. “You’re jealous,” he said. “That’s it? You’re jealous? So you’re here to kick my ass?” He came in and brushed past Barnes, who really didn’t look like a murder zombie with the light on-- just a guy in a hoodie and jeans, an unexpectedly good-looking guy at that, with a metal hand.

“I wouldn’t say it’s jealousy,” Bucky said. “But I been overprotective of Steve for his whole life and there’s no need for that to stop now just because I can’t bear to be in his presence for more than a couple of minutes a week.”

“Did he really kick your ass in Afghanistan?” Sam asked, looking back at him from inside the kitchen now, and he didn’t really look any less terrifyingly hot.

“Syria,” Bucky said, “and only after I hit him in the face so hard he had brain damage.”

Sam opened his fridge and peered into it, and immediately stepped back. “Wait a minute, did you break into my house and put food in my fridge?”

“Uh,” Bucky said, “yes. I-- I know where you’ve been and I figured you’d be hungry.”

“Who the fuck even _are_ you,” Sam said, straightening back up to turn and stare at him. There was a goddamn fucking casserole in there. Like, in a foil dish like from a restaurant, but it was like, a whole lasagna or something. And two loaves of bread and three kinds of sandwich meats and two kinds of cheese.

“Modern food is so fuckin’ easy,” Bucky said. “And I’m hungry all the fuckin’ time so it’s all I can think about.”

“I tell you what,” Sam said, going to the cupboard and getting out two plates, “I always wind up the mom friend. I’m always the one who’s like, Steve, you better have a sandwich. Natasha, did you remember to bring water. Wanda, sit down before you fall down. Tony, go the fuck to sleep. It’s always me.”

“I noticed,” Bucky said. “Because that was me. So I feel like— I know, Sam Wilson, that you don’t know me, except for some horrible shit, but I think we could be friends, if you could overlook the horrible shit.”

Sam stared at him for a long moment, holding the plates. He set them down on the counter, finally, and got out the casserole thing. “You came here to scare the shit out of me and then, like, proposition me for a friendship?”

Bucky leaned on the counter. “Sort of. I been followin’ you around a bit while I made up my mind, and I did make up my mind, and decided to bring food, but the stickin’ around to scare the shit out of you was kind of spur-of-the-moment and I hadn’t decided if I was goin’ to. I was considering just leavin’ a note.”

Sam mulled that over as he found a serving spoon. “I dunno, that might’ve been creepier,” he said.

“That was what I was thinkin’,” Bucky said, squinting a little. “But my sense of what’s appropriate is kinda skewed.”

“I guess it would be,” Sam said.

“Mostly by hangin’ out with Natasha too much,” Bucky went on. “That girl is weird as fuck. I appreciate every bit of it but it makes it hard for me to calibrate what modern folks do, y’know?”

Sam laughed as he dished out a serving of— it wasn’t lasagna but it was some kind of layered casserole just like it. He stuck it in the microwave and hit some buttons. “I guess that would make it complicated,” he said. “Natasha is her own entire universe of special.”

“She sure is,” Bucky said, looking at his feet. He was smiling a little.

“You knew her before,” Sam said. “Right? That’s the deal, isn’t it?”

Bucky glanced up, smile gone. “It’s complicated,” he said.

“It is?” Sam asked. “I mean, like, I figure if neither of you were really voluntarily in the situation, that’d be—“

Bucky was shaking his head. “It’s not that,” he said. “I mean, I wasn’t voluntarily in the US Army either, but I knew how to make the best of that. It wasn’t that. It’s more that, uh.” He shrugged, and looked down and away. “When both of you have had your memories altered it’s really hard to actually figure out what’s real and what’s not.” He glanced over at Sam, under his eyebrows, not quite making eye contact. “I think we knew each other, she’s pretty sure we didn’t, so I decided she must be right, and as soon as I said so, she changed her mind and now she thinks we did, so—“

“That’s fucked-up,” Sam said, astonished. He’d never really considered how fucked-up the whole thing was, not like this— and the thing was, he’d thought plenty about how fucked-up it was, he’d just not expected this extreme. “That’s— that’s so fucked-up.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said a little tightly, and shrugged, eyebrows arching resignedly. “Oh well. All you can do is make the best of it. But it’s, y’know. It’s kinda like living your whole life barefoot in a dark room fulla Legos.”

“Oh ow,” Sam said, grimacing. He shook his head. “That’s a good metaphor. I should have you come talk to my support group.”

Unexpectedly, Bucky grinned. “I’ve been, actually.” He looked pleased with himself as Sam regarded him blankly. “I mean-- I bugged it and hung out to listen.”

“Well,” Sam said. He had nothing really to say to that. The microwave beeped and he took the warm plate out, stuck a fork on it, and held it out.

“Thanks,” Bucky said, accepting the plate. Sam mutely stuck the other plate in and hit some more buttons. “It’s the closest I’ve been to getting any actual therapy myself, so, I mean, it was actually kind of helpful. I was there to creep on you, but wound up helping myself out in the process, so you should chalk that up as a professional victory.” He gestured with the fork. “More of a professional victory than any of your attempts to catch me.”

Oh Sam _liked_ this guy. He drew himself up a little, and said, “My greatest professional victory in relation to you is that time I kicked you in the back of the fuckin’ head.”

Bucky guffawed with laughter, which was gross because his mouth was full, but kind of endearingly reminded Sam of Steve, who talked with his mouth full fucking constantly except at formal events, which was extra-maddening since clearly Steve _knew better_ and just felt like it didn’t matter most of the time which was _fucking gross_. “That was a good one,” Bucky said. “Holy shit, they wiped that out so I had totally forgotten until this moment, but yeah, that was fuckin’ awesome.” He blinked and chewed, clearly thinking his way through remembering the fight, and then suddenly froze and looked haunted.

The microwave beeped and Sam pulled the plate out. “C’mon,” he said a little gruffly, knowing Bucky was realizing that the kick to the head had been to save Steve from him. “Let’s sit down like civilized humans.”

“I shot Natasha,” Bucky said quietly. “I’d remembered that. I’ve seen the scar. I know I did it. I forgot I almost got Steve.”

“You _did_ shoot Steve,” Sam reminded him, gently but firmly.

Bucky breathed in, breathed out, and sat down at Sam’s kitchen table. “I did,” he said. “A bunch of times. They didn’t wipe that, so I always remembered that. And I broke his face. Like, a bunch. I know that. I just, I’d forgotten about-- before that.” He glanced over. “You know, part of what they wiped is that I know I’d figured out they sent me to die against Steve. They didn’t figure I’d succeed. And I knew that.”

“We were supposed to kill you?” Sam leaned in, interested.

Bucky shook his head. “I actually might be unkillable,” he said, “but you were supposed to incapacitate me, and it was meant to distract you. I wasn’t actually meant to escape.”

“Unkillable,” Sam said, raising an eyebrow.

Bucky saluted with the fork. “That’s me,” he said.

__________________________

 ****  


Natasha’s ears were ringing, and she couldn’t hear anything. Dazed, she shook her head and tried to orient herself. Debris was still falling, she hadn’t lost consciousness, she was just disoriented. With all or none of her nerves firing, it was hard to keep focus, but she managed to scramble out of the hot zone and fetch up in the triangular safe space next to a partly-collapsed wall before the overwhelming cloud of dust caught up to the shockwave of explosion.

She yanked her dust mask over her face and breathed through it, waiting for the dust to settle, keeping her eyes and mucous membranes protected. She fished out her goggles after a few moments, and crawled through the white silent world, on edge, knowing she couldn’t hear and there was no way to see. Comms were all static, she couldn’t check in, didn’t know if the blast had caught James too.

He was a super soldier. He’d be fine. She just had to worry about herself. No time to fret over him. But the worry still caught at her gut a little as she watched something dark moving in the dust.

She stalked it, and finally got close enough to see that it was an enemy all right, but he was clearly dying; his throat had been crushed and he was slowly suffocating. She was too late to even really put him out of his misery. She bent closer to see, and satisfied herself that it was the kind of damage a metal hand would do.

James must’ve been pretty pissed-off, not to even bother finishing the guy off.

Every enemy she encountered was similarly already dead, most clearly given the killing stroke in a fantastic hurry-- one looked like he’d actually had his head punched clean off in one blow. Natasha, hardened killer that she was, still grimaced in disgust at what a mess that was.

Safe to say James was okay, and this base was pretty well cleared out. She made a desultory search of the rest of the place, found the data terminals had already been destroyed-- presumably by James, presumably after having made a copy, unless he had erroneously assumed she’d already been here, which would be too bad but he was usually so good about that-- and eventually decided she wasn’t going to be able to do any more good in here.

She clicked her comm, figuring the interference might have faded enough for her to make an attempt. It seemed like perhaps it worked, but there wasn’t an answer.

She frowned, and made her way back toward the entrance, passing the remains of several former enemies, and finishing off another mortally-wounded operative James hadn’t bothered putting out of his misery. “Tsk tsk,” she said, giving the comm another shot, “this is sloppy.”

There was a resounding moment of silence that wasn’t actually empty, and in a moment James clicked back at her.

“What’s your location?” she asked. “Comm back online?”

“Mine was never offline,” he said, sounding oddly breathless and really hoarse, like he’d been screaming. “Was it-- are you--” But he didn’t finish the sentence.

“Don’t distract yourself,” she said. “Do what you’re doing. I’m gonna head out, there’s nothing left for me to do in here.”

“The base is secure,” he said. “I’m just-- mopping up.”

“It’s a mess,” she said. “Did you clear the data terminals? They were busted before I got to ‘em.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I got it,” and he still sounded really distracted. And his voice was a wreck. Probably from the dust, she realized. Damn it, he should know to have a dust mask for things like this. She made a mental note to make sure he did.

“Do you need backup?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “No, I’m done here. Are-- are you all right?”

“Oh,” she said, “I’m fine. Had to wait out some of the dust, my hearing’s gone all funny.” She cleared the entryway to the bunker, which was clogged with bodies. “Did you kill-- _all_ these people? Holy shit, James.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the rendezvous.”

The rendezvous was only a couple hundred meters away, so she made her way there unhurriedly, checking all her clips as she went. It’d been pretty hot on the way in, but after the explosion any remaining resistance had just sort of melted away. It had been kind of nice, for once, and she perched in the sheltered niche of wall that they’d picked out as a good rendezvous point, and kept her eye on the compound.

James made a theatrical exit, stepping out of the door wreathed in flames with a huge grenade launcher over one shoulder and a shotgun in the other hand. He walked heavily and a little unevenly, like he was injured or very tired-- in exhaustion, he tended to lose a bit of his graceful ability to compensate for the weight of the metal arm-- and never so much as glanced back, not even when the place collapsed in a whoomph of fire.

“No prisoners, huh?” Natasha asked as soon as she figured he was within earshot.

He came a few steps closer, then stopped, tipping his head back to look up at her. He was absolutely covered in blood, spatters and gouts and just soakings of it, to the point that he was dripping. She sat up in alarm-- was he bleeding? He let the grenade launcher fall gracelessly, and took another shaky step, staring up at her so fixedly that she double-checked over her shoulder even though she knew no one was there.

No, he was looking at her. She pulled her dust mask off, shoved her goggles up, and jumped down. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I saw the explosion knock you back,” James said, “and then I couldn’t find you.” He was very quiet, very hoarse. He did have a dust mask, she noted, and it was around his neck, he’d clearly used it. How had his voice gotten so wrecked then?

“Well,” she said, “I was trying not to let the bad guys find me.” Had he thought she’d-- but she was good at this, that was the point.

He nodded slowly, and he was certainly moving like he’d been hurt.

“It looked--” He paused, like words were difficult. And he got like that sometimes, especially right after really violent ops. “It looked bad,” he said. “It looked like a wall had come down on you.”

“I was behind it,” she said. “I saw that. I got out of the way.”

He nodded slowly again, and she stepped into his personal space hesitantly-- if words were hard, sometimes touching was worse, but she had to check him for injuries. He’d caught shrapnel to the chest, and looked to have stopped a few bullets too, but all of them were flattened in his body armor. He’d have bruises, maybe a cracked rib or two. But none of the dripping blood seemed to be his.

He was trembling a little, though, she realized-- not the metal arm, but the other one, his hand was shaking. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” she said.

“I thought you were dead,” he said, blank-eyed. She retrieved the discarded grenade launcher-- those things weren’t cheap-- and started to walk back to the transport, but he was still standing there, so she doubled back and caught him by the arm. It wasn’t just his hand, his whole body was trembling finely.

“James,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“I thought you were dead,” he said again. “I couldn’t find you and I thought you were dead.”

“I’m better than that,” she said, a little crossly.

He blinked, and the expression he turned on her was so blank it didn’t look like he’d ever been a human. “Anyone can get unlucky,” he said.

A sarcastic answer was on the tip of her tongue but she reconsidered, looking at his dead eyes, seeing how he was shaking. “Come on,” she said, “let’s go get cleaned up and eat pancakes.”

She wasn’t exactly surprised when he took off on his own as soon as they were back to the city, and when she didn’t hear from him for a couple of days, but she wasn’t pleased either. He’d been sloppy with the data retrieval, but she was sort of surprised he’d done it at all; he’d thought she was dead, and he’d gone on a rampage. It was uncomfortable to contemplate.

So she didn’t, and put her head down and did her work, turned in the information to SHIELD, lived her life, and watched the tracking device she’d stuck in James’s boot tread wander slowly around the city.

His movements confirmed her suspicion: when he wasn’t with her, he didn’t sleep, didn’t stay anywhere longer than a couple of hours.

He acted like he was still a weapon, on the run from HYDRA.

_____________________________

 ****  


The camera turned on, and there was a fumble, and the view swung wildly, mostly dark. It resolved itself eventually, grainily, into a very poorly-lit vista from the forward-facing camera in a cellphone, being held at floor level, blurrily, by an arm that extended out into a dark mass that eventually focused into a face.

“So I keep getting these comments,” a voice said, soft and hoarse and male. “Not on these videos, on another… thing I run. They’re comments addressed to the Winter Soldier. And the overwhelming majority of them are urging me to kill myself.”

He breathed, and the microphone picked it up as a rustling sound as he exhaled. “It’s exhausting,” he said, “because of course I want to. So it kind of… compounds on it. And it’s just— it’s really exhausting.” He sounded genuinely exhausted, beat-down, defeated.

It became apparent, as the camera adjusted to the low ambient light, that he was lying on the floor, with the phone in his hand, also lying on the floor, which was why his hair was falling sideways into his face. He did nothing to move it.

“I did a search, to see if this was a thing.” His accent was thicker than normal, more Noo Yawk than in previous videos, but it was clearly the same person as usual, recognizably so now. “I mean, like, any of it. And the statistics for combat veterans being suicidal are astronomical, horrifying— I mean, I figured, but I didn’t know how bad it was. It’s real fuckin’ bad. It’s thousands of people. Some of ‘em been fighting it off since Vietnam. That’s fuckin’ horrible. So, you can see how that didn’t cheer me up.” His eyes might have been closed.

“And then I looked up if it was a thing where people tell other people to kill themselves, on the Internet,” he went on. “Or if it was just me. And that’s also, yeah. That’s a thing. That’s fuckin’ awful, and you should all be ashamed of yourselves. It’s one thing when it’s a war criminal like me, and I figure there’s some justification behind it, but it’s still a shitty thing to do. But you animals will send shit like this for no reason to, like, teenage girls with beauty vlogs, and I tell you what, that’s fuckin’ atrocious.”

He lay there a moment, unmoving, though his hair stirred with his breath. After a moment he fidgeted with something, and the camera moved, then settled, and he drew his hand back and rolled onto his back so that his profile faced the camera, indistinct in the poor light, but limned with a dim swatch of light that grazed across the line of his mouth and glittered in his eye, from some off-screen source.

“So here’s the thing,” he said. “I been suicidal for years. I been wantin’ to end it all since, sheesh, as long as I can properly remember. And I tried it a few times. And it doesn’t— it doesn’t do it, y’know? It’s not the answer. It just, it isn’t.” He stared at the ceiling for a bit, unmoving. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to try again. Doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of days where it’s all I can think about.”

He brought his hand up and rubbed his face, and left it lying on his chest. “Like today. I’m lying on my fuckin’ bathroom floor because I can’t— you know, it just, it hurts, all the time, and it never gets any better, and it wears at you until it drives you crazy, and I can’t think about anything else.”

His breath hitched a little as he breathed, and he didn’t speak for a long moment. “But while I’m thinkin’ about that and I’m thinkin’ about all the comments I got sayin’ I should just fuckin’ do it, and I’m thinkin’, _those fuckers, they’re fuckin’ right, I should, I really should_ — and I’m thinkin’ about that, and then I’m thinkin’, shit. What if I wasn’t the Winter Soldier? What if I was some, some kid, some teenager who didn’t understand much about the world yet and hadn’t ever lived through anything this bad yet?”

His voice shook a little. “And everybody in between,” he said, a little thickly. “All of us who are lyin’ on our bathroom floors alone thinkin’ that there’s no way to get up off this floor and there’s no point to any of it anyway. I know I’m not gonna do it, I’m not gonna kill myself, because I can’t, I got too much shit I gotta do. There’s all this shit I gotta do. Nobody else can do it, I have to.”

He rolled his head a little toward the camera. It was the most of his face he’d ever shown. His eyes glittered in the little scrap of light. “And there’s all this shit, I’m the only one who remembers. And if I’m dead, it’s gone from the world. I’m the only one. I can’t do it, guys. I gotta get up off this floor and stay alive. I can’t do it, I can’t kill myself.”

His voice wavered again, and he stopped, and after a moment he rolled his head back to full profile, and closed his eyes. “But that don’t make it any easier to get up off this fuckin’ floor,” he said unsteadily, voice thick. “It don’t— God! It fuckin’ hurts! It just, it _hurts_ , all the time, all day, all night, every day, every week, there’s no fuckin’ end to it, and I can’t, I can’t fix it and I can’t ignore it and I can’t make it stop and I’m just so fuckin’ tired. I’m so tired.” He lifted his hand and rubbed his face, and his hand was visibly shaking. His breath hitched, then stopped, and he let it out slowly after a moment, and took a breath in.

“I don’t wanna lie here alone,” he said. “But I’m not. I’m not alone. Statistically, there’s a fuckload of you lyin’ here with me, thinkin’ the same thing. Hurtin’ the same way. It fuckin’ sucks, don’t it?” He laughed bitterly, and glanced over at the camera, teeth bared. His breath was tight as he sucked it back in, and he sniffled.

“I spent a lotta time like this,” he said, “all the years I been around. I probably got as much experience at this exact thing as anybody. Including times when I tried to actually do it. Including times when I pretty much succeeded. So I’m gonna tell you a couple of things nobody else tells you. Okay?”

He glanced over again, then returned his gaze to the ceiling. “Number one thing is, it doesn’t get any better and it doesn’t go away. Which ain’t what you need to hear, but I’m too fuckin’ old to lie anymore. It’s not gonna fix itself. You can’t be strong and make it go away. It won’t. You might stop noticing it, but it’s there and it’s gonna wait until you’re weak, because everybody gets weak, and it’s gonna come roaring back even worse than it’s ever been. So that’s the first thing. But here’s the important thing that goes along with it: Death doesn’t fix it.”

He rolled his head from side to side, a denial, still staring straight up. “Death don’t make it stop,” he said. “I died, more’n once. And it don’t make the pain stop at all. It makes it worse. And it’s no kind of sweet release or anything. It’s not a relief. It’s just more bullshit, and worse. And it’s just— it _doesn’t work_. That’s the fuckin’ truth.” He shook his head again, still staring, eyes fixed. “It’s just a big ol’ shit sandwich a’ lies. When the pain drags at you and is like, _do it, kill yourself_ , it’s giving you this kinda— this implicit promise that it’ll fix your problem. And it won’t. It won’t give you any relief. It’s the fuckin’ worst.”

He stared up for a moment, then abruptly rolled onto his other side, so his back was to the camera, and there was an awful muffled groan or sob noise, and the vague lump that was him shook. “God,” he said in a minute, “it don’t get any better, ever.” He was clearly crying now. 

He rolled onto his back again, and let his head loll limply toward the camera. “So that’s the truth,” he said, and the light caught a little fragment of glitter as a tear rolled down his face. He sniffled. “Don’t do it,” he went on thickly. “If you’re lyin’ here on this floor with me and you’re thinkin’ about it, don’t. Don’t do it, okay?”

His voice, dulled with tears, went plaintive. “Don’t do it. Don’t leave me here alone on this floor. I’m here with you. Stay with me.”

He rolled a little farther, onto his side, facing the camera, putting his hands up, covering his nose and mouth with his fingers. “Stay here with me,” he said, tears visibly rolling down both cheeks. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me here alone.”

 ****  
  


Lakeisha texted James immediately when she had a moment to open the footage and look at it. “Jesus,” she wrote, “are you okay?”

He wrote back after only a few minutes. “Sorry,” he wrote, “I shouldn’t have sent that.”

“No,” she wrote back, “it’s good, it’s— it made me cry all over, I think it’s a really good video, it just scared the shit out of me. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” he wrote. “I don’t get like that much. Usually when I do I can’t really talk so I don’t have the impulse to say things like that.” He followed up immediately with, “I shouldn’t have sent that, I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“I think it’s phenomenal,” she wrote back. “I think you absolutely should speak your mind on that. Who is sending you messages like that though?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he wrote back. “I was— I only spoke up because I searched and found out it’s so goddamn commonplace.”

“It is,” Lakeisha said. “That’s why I think it’s a really good thing for you to speak out about. Is it okay for me to edit it up and post it? Because I really think you should.”

“I don’t know,” he wrote, and that was all for a little while. A couple of hours later, though, she came back to her phone and he’d followed it up.

“Yeah,” he wrote, “you can post it, if you think it’s not just a bunch of whining.”

“It’s absolutely not a bunch of whining,” she wrote.

She ran it by Jeremy. “I just want to know how you react to this,” she said.

“Why?” he asked.

She hit play instead of answering, and he frowned and watched it. She stood back, out of the way, not observing him too closely. When the video ended, Jeremy closed the window and wiped his face. He turned around, and there were tears on his cheeks.

“Yeah,” he said, “okay. I get it.”

“He texted me and said I didn’t have to post it, but I think I should,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “You should.” He wiped his face again.

Lakeisha wasn’t sure if it was a confirmation of her suspicions or not when the official Winter Soldier verified account linked to the video. But she wasn’t surprised when that skyrocketed the channel’s popularity. The ad revenue rolled in, and she paid off her debts and opened a savings account for the first time in her life, and checked with James periodically that he was okay with the percentages they’d negotiated.

He always was.

He never had time to meet in person.

She let it slide.

The official Winter Soldier account started posting up response videos from other people. It started to become a thing, people lying on their bathroom floors crying about not being alone.

James sent her a link to a video, and she was glad she was at home when she got it, because when she opened it, it was one of those response videos.

It was a man lying on the floor of a dim room, as normal, but when he spoke, she recognized his voice immediately.

“I’m lyin’ on my bathroom floor alone,” the voice said, a hoarse voice that still had a familiar resonance. “And I been here before a lotta times. And I dunno how it is for everybody, but I got a lot of reasons that I always felt like I was really, uniquely alone here.”

His voice shook, and he wiped his face with one hand. The other was holding his phone. “So I just gotta say that it means more than I can express to see that people talk about this now. It’s such a long time since I felt anything other than totally alone. But here I am, and I’m not gonna do it, I’m not gonna do anything stupid, because now that I know I’m not alone I don’t want anybody else to feel like they’re alone. I’m here and I’m gonna get through this and I’m gonna be okay.”

His voice cracked on that, and he covered his face with his hand. He took in a big breath in a moment, loud enough to be audible on the microphone. “I’m not alone. You’re not alone. We’ll get through this.”

He was still a moment, then pushed himself upright, pulling his phone with him. The light was better, and he was even more recognizable: Steve Rogers, red-eyed and tired-looking, in a too-big blue sweatshirt, rumpled and gorgeous. He composed himself a little, then looked into the camera. “You’re not alone,” he said. “I know it hurts, and I’m here with you.”

___________________________

This time there was some warning. Sam noticed the little sticker next to his door handle. It was one of those foil stars like teachers put on tests. He shone his keychain flashlight on it, and it caught the light and reflected it back: red. A red foil star. And it was just a sticker, nothing on it, nothing under it, no wires or circuitry, no bug, nothing special about it.

Just-- a shiny red star. He considered that a moment, then carefully unlocked his door and pushed it open. “Bucky?”

“Yo,” Barnes said, from the kitchen. “Was that creepy?”

“Yup,” Sam said.

“Better than the shrieking and flailing though,” Barnes offered, sitting forward in the chair he’d pulled up to the kitchen table.

“I almost turned around and went to get someone else,” Sam said. “What the fuck.”

“Well,” Barnes said. “It was stuff I had on me.”

“You carry stickers around,” Sam observed.

“Foil stickers and confetti,” Barnes corrected. “A stationery kit. Sharpies. And vinyl tape. And a little pair of scissors. Never be without ‘em.”

“Vinyl tape,” Sam said, seizing on that as the oddest thing in the list.

“Vinyl tape,” Barnes confirmed. “Useful for all kinds of shit. Duct tape isn’t the universal marvel pop culture would have you believe.”

“Oh no?” Sam said, coming in and shutting the door behind him like this wasn’t weird at all.

“You know we had duct tape in the forties,” Barnes said. “Wasn’t bad either. Called it duck tape, though? Cuz it was made out of duck fabric.”

“Duck fabric,” Sam said. He knew that, but he was playing dumb. “Like, duckies printed on it?”

“No, duck,” Barnes said. “Like, the stuff they make dungarees outta. Canvas stuff.”

“You said dungarees,” Sam said. “That shit is hilarious. Old people say dungarees.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Barnes said. “Mock my word choices, I’ll leave confetti in your underwear drawer.”

“That’s diabolical,” Sam said.

Barnes shrugged. “I _am_ a supervillain,” he said. “Apparently.”

Sam went over to his fridge and opened it, and sure enough-- “Barnes, you don’t gotta reverse-rob me every time you come over.”

“I got anxieties,” Barnes said, shrugging unconcernedly. “And I can’t do it to Steve so I project it onto you.”

Sam turned and gave him a long look. Projecting. Anxieties. “You gonna out-counsel me?” But it was probably good that Bucky knew words like that because it meant he was getting help. Though, how? “Who’s your shrink? How you manage that?”

Barnes huffed a laugh. “I don’t,” he said. “There’s nobody with the clearance to know what I actually am that wouldn’t just turn me in.”

Sam considered that. “I could probably hook you up,” he said. “I mean, I don’t got the training, but I bet I could get you in with somebody.”

“You know who absolutely can’t break confidentiality?” Bucky asked, and the question wasn’t who, it was did Sam know, so Sam frowned and shook his head; he couldn’t guess what Barnes was getting at. “Priests.”

“Oh,” Sam said, surprised; he hadn’t thought of that. “Does that help?”

Barnes shrugged. “They also can’t give you any psychological help,” he said. “They can only give you theological advice. Moral help. Things like that. Psychotherapy is medical and they’re not doctors. But,” he shrugged again, “sometimes it’s nice to really get it all out, even if all they’ve got for me is a debate on free will and reassurances that Jesus loves me.”

“Is that helpful?” Sam asked.

“Better than nothin’,” Barnes said. “Actually I came to talk to you about that.”

“About Jesus? Oh, or getting a shrink?” Sam asked, perking up a little. He went back into the fridge and got out the milk.

“No,” Barnes said. Sam waggled the milk carton, and he nodded, then went on, “not for me.”

“Ah,” Sam said, and poured two glasses of milk. He set the milk carton on the table, and a glass in front of Barnes, and sat down with the other. “Who?”

“Steve,” Barnes said. “Who’s he see? Is he okay?”

Sam wrinkled up his nose. “He’s seen people,” he said. “On and off.”

“You see that video he posted?” Barnes asked, and he already had his phone out, and turned it to show Sam.

“No,” Sam said, and took the phone. He watched the video, grimacing a little in sympathy and unsurprise-- Cap was kind of tore up, he knew that--  and looked over at Barnes, who looked grim, then glanced back down. “This is a reaction video, though. He’s answering.” He found the original. It was by a handle called the Winter Elvis. He glanced up at Bucky, eyebrows raised. “Answering this guy.”

Bucky tilted his head, conceding the point, and Sam watched the video in question. As soon as the person spoke he jerked his head up and looked at Barnes. “This is you.”

Barnes tilted his head forward, a nod.

Sam made himself look back down and finish watching the video, and it hurt, it hurt so bad, it was so familiar, and when it was over he was crying. “Oh Jesus, man,” he said, wiping his face and handing Barnes’s phone back. “Jesus fuckin’-- Barnes, my God.”

“Sorry,” Barnes muttered, and he was looking down at his feet, pushed back a little from the table. “There’s-- I just, I figured, I wasn’t the only one, and I was right, there’s a shitload of response videos and they’re all people who feel the same fucking way, and I thought--” He shrugged.

“No, it’s good,” Sam said, wiping his face again. “No, man, it’s good. It’s so good that-- it’s the kind of thing it’s super hard to talk about.”

“I figured,” Barnes said. He looked sort of wooden and resentful, but he was talking, and that was generally good. “And I don’t-- but, my point.” He took a breath, let it out. “My point is. Is somebody taking care of Steve?”

“Probably,” Sam said. “Believe it or not, he does have a pretty good support team, and even some people who understand that whether he’s precisely human or not, he’s still a person.”

Barnes nodded tightly. “Okay,” he said. He bit his lower lip. “I also. Um. I was-- I thought I should run this by you first, but--” He set his phone down, picked up the glass of milk, fidgeted with that instead. “I think Steve should make more videos like that.” He glanced up, made eye contact, looked back down. “Like-- mental health support kinda things. Because. I mean. I would, but I’m nobody officially, and officially, I’m dead and also evil.”

“Huh,” Sam said, sitting up a little straighter as an understanding of what Barnes meant kind of washed across his mind like a warm wave. “Oh hey. That’s a good idea.”

“Like, you could help him,” Barnes said, encouraged. “You two are so wholesome. And like. Macho. You know? Like, if you manly All-American Heroes can talk about this shit then clearly there’s no shame in it.”

“We could do that,” Sam said. “I mean-- probably get the PR department involved, I don’t think either of us know much about videos.”

“I got a girl who does it for me,” Barnes said. He drank some of the milk, set the glass down. “She’s-- well, you got access to better stuff than that. I just like her so much. If you need ideas she’s a good ideas person.”

“We could maybe all meet up and talk about it,” Sam suggested carefully.

Barnes visibly twitched, took in a breath, let it out slowly. “Maybe,” he said, and Sam knew he didn’t control his expression all that well.

“I just got back into town,” Sam said, “so I dunno what-all is goin’ on with everybody here, what kinda schedule we got comin’ up, but maybe you could come up with some possible dates and I’ll see if I can wrangle Steve? Or you could, you got his number.”

Barnes nodded tightly. “Let me give you my number,” he said, and Sam fished out his phone to key it in directly.

“We could all three of us make a video,” Sam said, sending a text to the number and watching Bucky’s phone light up. “You know. People think you’re a role model, you might be a little more approachable, you know?”

Bucky stared at him blankly for a minute, a furrow appearing then disappearing between his eyebrows. “Well,” he said, face suddenly relaxing into amusement, “that’d be kind of making an announcement I don’t think anybody’s really prepared to make.”

“Oh yeah,” Sam said.

“I mean, we could collaborate, but it’s probably best to leave it no closer a collaboration than we sort of already have,” Barnes said. “Like, response videos to each other. But it’s not wise to either acknowledge me or imply that I’m actually, physically, in good with either of you. You’re clean-cut All-Americans and whatnot, and I’m definitely not, and I think most of the people who watch these videos are assuming I’m a… more recent veteran?”

“Fair point,” Sam said. Now seemed as good a time as any to broach the topic. “So uh-- Steve said he ran into you in-- overseas, he was cagey about just where.”

“Ran into,” Barnes said, and laughed. “You could call it that.”

“He said it had been kinda hectic,” Sam allowed. “But he’d also said you’d promised to look him up when you were back in town.”

Barnes bit his lip, took a deep breath, let his breath back out. “Yeah,” he said. “I did. I-- tried, Sam, and I-- I can’t.”

“He really, really, really has been looking forward to it,” Sam said. “I know he’s tryin’ to play it cool but he’s like, every time his phone so much as blips he’s all twitchy looking at it.”

Barnes nodded, eyes indirect. “I, ah,” he said. He looked anguished. “I don’t know how,” he said finally, staring fixedly at the ground. “I figure maybe this, if we got a project, I can do that. I can do that. But I can’t-- just, as me? Like I’m a person or something, and I can’t--” He stopped to breathe, and Sam was uncomfortably aware that he had a mass murderer low-key freaking out in his kitchen, and he himself had no weapons to hand or easy escape options. He didn’t know how this guy stacked up against Steve, in terms of super-soldierness and reflexes and stuff, but he knew Steve was uncannily inhuman when caught off-guard. This guy could snap him like a twig, and he’d have no chance to dodge. Normals who fought alongside supers had to know stuff like this; Sam could hold his own if he had armor, weaponry, and distance. Close quarters, he was fucked.

Barnes let his breath out slowly, and looked up at Sam, eyes gleaming. Somehow, like he’d read Sam’s mind, he was absolutely on his wavelength, and that glitter in his expression said eloquently that he, too, knew that in close quarters like this he’d have Sam reduced to meat puree in a blink. “I’m not really a person,” he said, gently. “And I know how to be only partly a person with Natasha, and how to pretend how to be a person around people who don’t know me that well. But with Steve? I don’t know how to be anything I know how to be.”

“Try telling him that,” Sam said. “You need me to help you, I can be there, but you could just tell him that, just like I did. Only sooner rather than later.” Barnes was staring at him, and Sam went for the killing blow. “He needs you, Barnes. He doesn’t care what you are, he just needs you on his side.”

Barnes set his jaw, swallowed hard, and looked down, and after a moment, he nodded.


	11. Can't Help Falling In Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A blanket fort, a re-negotiation of terms, and the aftermath of a mission gone right. 
> 
> Natasha watched the explosion in the rear-view mirror and thought to herself with grim satisfaction that, very occasionally, her job was kind of cool.

  
  


The video started with the camera struggling to focus on a dark blur, and finally picking up on a string of Christmas lights a short distance away. “Hey,” the usual hoarse soft voice said, and everything was dark blurs except that string of lights, which were sort of lumpily strung amid varying other levels of dark something. “So um. I um. The bathroom floor got really cold. And I was-- I spent kind of a while there and I-- couldn’t talk, so. Making a video would have. Um. Been dumb. But uh.” Things rustled, he was changing position perhaps. He was quite close to the camera, some of the dark blurs were likely his face and hair. He audibly scratched his scalp, and there was an odd whir like machinery.

“So um. I just-- I wanted to check in. If anybody’s. You know. On their bathroom floor. Or-- wherever, I mean, whatever floor you’re on, or if your floor is too covered in-- shit, or whatever-- laundry,” he laughed humorlessly, “or guns or whatever, so you can’t even fuckin’ lie on the floor in peace or like, despair or whatever, fuck--”

There was another rustle, another weird little machine-whir. His voice through all of this was sort of muffled, like he was mumbling a little, more than he normally did. “So anyway. I um. I’m better, ish, now. But I wanted to check in. If you’re having a bad-- night, or day, or week, or year, or whatever. I am too. I’m there too. It sucks. I was worse. I can talk now. Sort of. Sometimes. I can’t shut up, actually. So I thought, instead of, you know, talking to nothing, I’d talk to you. And maybe. Maybe that would be a little, I don’t know. Better. We’re in this. Together? I don’t know. Some shit like that.”

There was a sudden, thick silence, and he took a shuddering breath. “Fuck,” he said. “I-- fuck, sometimes I just get, I get-- really _sad_. I’m really sad right now. So I did-- I tried to do-- you know, to _do_ somethin’ about it. I don’t-- nobody likes to feel like shit, and I been feelin’ like shit, and I wish people’d stop sendin’ me nasty messages because some of you been sendin’ really nice messages, really supportive comments, videos of your own, it’s so great that people find somethin’ to kinda-- resonate with, or whatever, with all this, I’m glad, I really am. I thought-- I figured I wasn’t th’only one in what I was, you know, what I was dealin’ with, and I thought, I just wanted to talk to other people who-- who felt like that. And that’s-- that’s cool. But I just.”

Fabric rustled, and he sniffled, unmistakably. The camera’s focus hunted, losing the Christmas lights into a series of colored blur-circles; briefly, there was a hint of focus that might have been half of his face, and a gleam of multicolored light off a series of small metal scales or plates, but it went out of focus again, and found the Christmas lights. “‘S a lot more nice messages ‘n mean ones, but there’s a lotta mean ones, and I saw-- jackasses were leavin’ mean comments on people’s response videos. And to that I gotta say, fuck you. _Fuck you_. Don’t go after them. Just because you hate me. Come after me.” His voice was thick and angry, and the blurs moved in a way that suggested he was gesticulating angrily. He pointed a hand toward the camera, and the light reflected off it like it was metal, but the focus moved away again. “Fuck you. Come after me, and say more mean and nasty shit. Don’t fuckin’ single out a bunch of people who were brave enough to have honest responses about this. Come after me. I’m an honest-to-God war criminal and if anyone deserves to get hate, then I do, and that’s fine, whatever. I can cry on my own time, I already am, fuck it, I’ll cry right now for you, _fine_ ,” and he certainly was crying. “Fine! Just, what the fuck is wrong with you, leave the others out of this. Christ. I even saw people sendin’ hate to Captain America and for fuckin’ real what is _wrong_ with you do not do that.”

He took a shuddering breath. “You can’t hate Captain America. Even if you hate America! Which, like, close your ears, Cap-- I totally fuckin’ hate America, and I get to say that because I fuckin’ _died_ for it-- it’s the fuckin’ _worst_ , like, most of the time, but not Cap. Never Cap! He’s like--” He broke off, breathed in, held it a moment, sighed.

“Okay, this isn’t a video about my obvious and well-documented hard-on for Captain America,” he said in a moment, with a soft laugh. “This isn’t that kind of channel. But like. What is wrong with you. Buncha fuckin’ savages in this town.” He made a gesture, maybe rubbing his forehead; light reflected off what was maybe the metal arm, and again, some machinery made a weird whirring noise.

“I came here to talk about a kind of positive thing,” he said. “I got up off the bathroom floor. Well, metaphorically. Because the place I’m at right now doesn’t have a-- an actual bathroom. I’m, kind of, I’m not homeless exactly but I can’t-- be around people at the moment so I’m kind of-- I’m not in a house, properly. So there’s no bathroom. And I was lyin’ on the floor of this,” he waved around. “Fuckin’, dump. And the floor is covered in gross shit and like, guns and shit, all my crap, an’ crap from before I got here, just plain like straight-up garbage, it’s a mess and there’s like, fuckin’, mold, ugh. And I was freezin’ my face off and too-- I dunno, _sad_ , I guess-- to do anything about it, and finally I had enough kind of, wherewithal I guess, gumption, somethin’, to get up and move. So I did. And I made a blanket fort. And I found these lights, and go figure this place has a workin’ power outlet, lucky me. And so now I have a blanket fort. And I’m in it. So-- that’s my. That’s my positive thing. I guess. So here’s my blanket fort and I’m sad in a blanket fort but I didn’t-- kill anyone, or myself, or-- whatever.”

His dark bulk shifted a little, like he was maybe tilting his head to look at the camera. “So I’m-- I just figured I’d, kinda, check in. It’s not warm in this blanket fort but it’s not as cold as the rest of this fuckin’ place. So, you know. Come on in, we can sit around and-- be sad, or-- or whatever-- together. It’s okay.”

He laughed bitterly. “I mean, it’s never really gonna be okay. Nothin’ is ever goin’ to be okay again because that’s just not how the world works. It was really never okay in the first place, we just didn’t know any better.” He gestured vaguely. “But it’s okay for now, we’re in a,  a place, okay, and it’s not-- it’s not a bad place. It’s an okay place.”

He sniffled, and it sounded like maybe he was wiping his face or something. “You don’t have to be very okay to survive,” he said, and his voice was muffled and small. “But if you survive sometimes there’s still good things you can do. And that’s-- I mean, that’s enough, right? You don’t have to-- it doesn’t have to be, like, dramatic. You don’t have to save the world. You don’t have to do anything. But you _can_. Because you’re still here. You can still do-- something.”

He breathed, shallow and harsh, for a moment. “I got so much shit to do,” he said. “And I-- I can’t right now. It won’t-- it won’t be soon. But I _will_. Because I’m still-- here.”

  
  


______________________

 

Nick Fury stood at his open fridge in his bathrobe and considered, for a moment, that if he were an analyst considering this life, this is about how he’d expect an old ex-Director of SHIELD to die, after all. “I suppose,” he said, letting the fridge door swing shut, “if you were going to just kill me you’d do it through the wall again.”

The Winter Soldier put his arms behind his head, tipping back in the kitchen chair, which creaked alarmingly. He made a face and abruptly tipped back forward. “Shit, I forget how much I weigh now,” he said. “No, I ain’t here to wax you, old man. Remember I’m a good guy now.”

Nick frowned. The guy didn’t look more than maybe… 205, he’d bulked back up a little, he was eating better and looked healthy. Maybe 215, he wasn’t built like a comic book drawing, like Rogers was; he actually had a pretty solid torso all the way down. Chair should handle that, no problem, even if you leaned back in it like a little kid. “How good a guy, though,” Nick said.

The Soldier snorted. “Good as you tell me to be, pal,” he said. “Anyway I came in because Natasha told me you and I had to talk, so I figured I might as well get that over with when I was free. And I figured, if I could find you, you were free. Sorry if I was wrong about that, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You do scare me, that’s true,” Nick said. There was no point lying about it, the man was terrifying. “That’s because I’m not a fucking moron. And I know I wronged you, son.”

The Soldier screwed up his face. He had a lot more expressions now than Nick remembered him having before, along with his face no longer looking so fucking hollow. “I wouldn’t say you wronged me,” he said. “Stiffin’ my paycheck is wronging me. Sellin’ me out is wronging me. Fuckin’ up an op by not giving other agents necessary information isn’t wronging me so much as it is just being a fuckin’ dumbass, and I’m used to that.”

Nick laughed, at that; he had to. “Dead to rights,” he said. “You got me dead to rights. But it is worse than that, Barnes, I ain’t treatin’ you right. I’m using you mostly because you’re the best, which is just the truth, but I’m also cheaping out, because anyone else I wanted to put in as a double agent would require a shitload of expensive backup that I just haven’t bothered with, for you.”

“Don’t need backup,” the Soldier said.

“Everybody needs backup,” Nick countered.

The Soldier shook his head. “There’s no backup I’d trust,” he said. “I know what you’re gettin’ at and it’s the same song and dance I get from Romanoff, but I’m at considerably more risk of bein’ betrayed by my backup than I am of not being able to get out of a situation without them.”

“If you can trust Romanoff,” Nick said. The Soldier stood up, the chair creaking alarmingly again as he got out of it. Nick was gonna have to take a look at that chair, because he wasn’t that much under 200 himself. Dying in his bathrobe at the fridge at the hands of a renowned assassin was one thing, but biting it in a chair collapse was just undignified.

“I trust her because I want to,” the Soldier said. “Not because she’s trustworthy. That doesn’t extend to secondhand. And your people, Fury-- I don’t even like it when she relies on them, but they’re scared of her. They’ll work for her. For me? They’ll sell me out in five seconds, Fury, don’t think you got a good enough hold on them that they won’t.”

“I wouldn’t assign just anyone,” Nick said, radiating annoyance. The Soldier was within an inch or two of his height, probably would be a little shorter without the big stompy boots, but he wasn’t standing up to loom, particularly. He loomed, all right, but it didn’t seem like he was trying to be particularly threatening. He really did look good, looked healthy, looked like he was sleeping and brushing his hair and smiling sometimes in his free time. He was still a terrifying, menacing death machine, but he was a glossy, competent one with bright eyes and a mobile face with some color in it.

“Your people aren’t that good,” the Soldier said. “They’re not-- really your people, y’know? There’s some agendas. Tony Stark has a bounty on my head, personally, so I wouldn’t rely on the Avengers for quarter. Steve Rogers hasn’t particularly noticed. I wouldn’t really trust him to be reasonable about me either. He’d die for me, but you really, really don’t need that, Fury, I know you don’t, so it’s best he stay out of any ops I’m on.”

“I really don’t need that,” Nick agreed, grimacing ruefully. He wasn’t sure what would be able to kill Steve Rogers, but he wasn’t keen on finding out. Rogers was a wild card, but he was so fucking good he was usually reliable for pulling the fat out of the fire.

“So don’t worry your pretty little head about backup,” the Soldier said.

“But hold up,” Nick said. “Tell me more about this. You trust Natasha but don’t think she’s trustworthy?”

The Soldier leaned in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. He had a solid, lean kind of grace that Rogers really didn’t; it was inevitable to compare them since they were both super-soldiers, but they weren’t much alike beyond being big and broad-shouldered. The Soldier was much more sturdily-built, sleek like a predator, and really looked like a guy who could fuck you up, not a superhero but, well, a thug. A meathead. And it wasn’t a good idea to assume that was true, because he was a lot smarter than that.

He let his breath out slowly. “I mean,” he said, “I get her motivations, mostly, and I get how she works, so I kind of know where her lines are. She wouldn’t betray me for money, or for fanaticism, or for any of the usual reasons. But that don’t mean she wouldn’t for the right reasons. And part of that is that I wouldn’t know about it, I wouldn’t see it comin’, because I know she respects me.”

“You think there’d be anything that would make it worth her while to sell you out?” Nick asked, a little wounded on Natasha’s behalf. She was fiercely loyal, she was proven over and over. But the Soldier wasn’t wrong. It was eerie, how close this was to the very conversation he’d had with her. He wondered if the Soldier had her bugged. If anyone could do it, it’d be him.

“Sure there would,” the Soldier said. “And the thing is, whatever it was, I’d probably agree with her that it was worth it. She’s usually right about this stuff.” He shrugged. “And I figure, if she wants to sell me out, then I’ll go. So it’s not that I trust her never to betray me, it’s that I trust her enough that if she wants to betray me, well then I don’t really have any other plans.”

“That’s,” Nick said, “that’s true love,” a little helplessly, spreading his hands, a little sarcastic and bewildered, but he did kind of understand the man’s point. Especially if he had Natasha bugged so he’d actually know about it ahead of time. If anyone could do it, it’d be this guy.

“And see,” the Soldier said, “that’s my issue with Steve, he feels like that about me, like if I want to kill him he should just let me, and that’s not warranted, see, because I don’t have what Natasha does. I’m not always in control, and I don’t always make sense. And Steve doesn’t know everything he thinks he does about me. He doesn’t know. He just-- he’s willing to take it on faith, from me, and that’s not warranted. So I can’t-- I can’t work with him.”

“That’s a shame,” Nick said, “because he wants to work with you.”

That actually seemed to surprise the Soldier. It hadn’t surprised Fury at all; that was how he’d found out what had gone down, because Rogers had called him to freak out. Promising to let them work together had been about the only thing that’d tone him down, and Fury really hadn’t expected it to be a problem.

“What if I made Steve your backup?” Nick offered.

The Soldier recovered from his moment of unbalanced startlement, and glowered fiercely. “Captain fuckin’ America isn’t someone’s covert backup,” he said. “Especially not if that someone is trying to maintain cover as a double agent.”

“You could quit that,” Nick said. “Your solo reputation took a hit anyway, and that was my bad, and my conscience can’t stand sending you out solo like this anymore. I could turn you covert and make you Steve’s backup, if all my people are so untrustworthy.”

The Soldier had gone totally blank, which was actually familiar from Natasha, and it gave Nick the same little warning pang in his gut to see it on his face as hers. They’d both had so much goddamn conditioning, it made Nick sick even as he got jealous of their discipline. That was the cost of such discipline, and it was beyond what anyone could choose. You couldn’t really consent to that, by its very nature, and it was reprehensible to do to unconsenting people, but its results were just so undeniably effective.

“I can’t quit that,” the Soldier said finally. “I got gigs lined up I can’t punk out of.”

“Or what?” Nick asked. “Or they’ll not hire you again? You don’t want to get hired by them again, they’re bad guys.”

A flicker of emotion, but gone before Nick could parse it. The Soldier shook his head. “Some of them are pretty neutral,” he said. “They’re not all gigs for you, Fury. No offense but you can’t afford to employ me exclusively. I can’t take any gigs from you that conflict with my independent ones.”

“And I can’t protect you from Tony Stark's bounty hunters if your independent gigs conflict with the ones I book you for,” Nick said, exasperated. “You’re right I can’t afford what you’re worth, but nobody can, Soldier, nobody’s payin’ you what you’re worth.”

That made the Soldier give him a truly odd look, and it went on for a moment, the man peering at him with his eyes wide but his eyebrows drawn down and his mouth pressed into a frown. Incredulous? Puzzled? Nick honestly couldn’t figure it out. Finally the Soldier gave a bleak laugh. “I think we’re in agreement on that,” he said, “which is about what I figured. There’s no earthly power that can give me what I deserve.” He smiled bitterly.

“And what’s that?” Nick asked.

The Soldier gave him a long, considering look; he wasn’t expressionless now, but he was reserved, inscrutable. “A clean death,” the Soldier said finally, quirking one eyebrow. “Preferably, seventy-five years ago, when I earned it.”

Nick let his breath out in a long whistle. “Rogers was right,” he said, “you are dramatic.”

“Says the man with the floor-length black leather coat,” the Soldier said, surprised into a laugh.

“I don’t have it anymore,” Nick pointed out. “You shot it full of holes.”

“Dramatically,” the Soldier conceded. He was smiling now. “With you in it. Not many have survived that honor.”

“I’m aware,” Nick said.

“Anyway,” the Soldier said. “I’m pretty sure that no matter what gigs I took, you couldn’t protect me from Tony Stark. And he’s the only one I’m really scared of.”

“You’re scared of Tony Stark,” Nick said, surprised both at the content and fact of the revelation. “Iron Man?”

“No,” the Soldier said. “I’m not in the slightest worried about Iron Man. I’m a better cyborg than he is. But the man who built Iron Man is probably the only one who could understand me well enough to take me apart. And that’s what I’m afraid of. I’m not afraid of torture or injury or death because whatever could be done to me has been. But he could maybe actually understand what’s been done to me, and if there’s one person in the world I don’t want to have that knowledge, it’s him.”

“What could he do with this knowledge?” Nick asked.

“What couldn’t he do?” the Soldier asked. “Look, I’ll compromise on a lot of stuff, I’ll work with all kinds of villains if it furthers my ends. Tony Stark is the only person I can say with complete confidence is not on my side. I don’t think even he knows that. But I do. Listen, I’ll think whatever you’re offering over, sure, but keep me the fuck away from the Avengers, and keep me away from Stark. You can’t protect me from him.”

 

__________________________________

  
  


Natasha watched the explosion in the rear-view mirror and thought to herself with grim satisfaction that, very occasionally, her job was kind of cool.

James, not driving, had the freedom to turn around and actually watch the explosion face-on. Actually he had been facing backward from the time she’d started the Jeep, ass propped on the dashboard and foot braced against the seat and big fucking gun cradled in his arms, watching for pursuit.

He startled her by letting out a whoop; she had to glance over to realize that the noise was genuine high-spirits. “That was the fuckin’ nuts,” he said, yelling over the noise of the engine. “Yeah! Eat fire, you fuckin’ Nazis!”

He cackled like a lunatic halfway back to civilization, and as they swapped their gear out at the stash point and pulled on civvies to blend in enough to make it to the safehouse unremarked he was still in refreshingly high spirits. “Fuck yeah,” he said, apropos of nothing.

“That one was pretty rewarding,” Natasha conceded.

“C’mon,” he said, “ain’t you even a little worked up?”

“I’m not the whooping type,” she said primly.

He telegraphed his next move so she didn’t fucking deck him, which she appreciated: he came toward her with his hands out, grabbed her by the ribs, picked her up and swung her around. She allowed a laugh, then grabbed him and shoved him against the side of the Jeep and kissed him hard.

He liked that, he opened right up for her and went sweet and pliant, and she grabbed him by the hair and manhandled him around. His eyes went dark, pupils huge. “Such a good boy,” she purred. He’d changed out of his tac gear but he still had gunpowder residue on his hands, his face; his jeans were grubby and worn and he had an old t-shirt with the sleeves cut out under a battered and disreputable hooded sweatshirt, and he hadn’t bothered with other shoes but still had his giant fuck-off combat boots on. They were at a shed in the middle of the woods, and it was the middle of the afternoon and there was nobody around for miles and they really should keep moving to make sure there was no pursuit, but—

She was still in her tac gear; she’d been organizing weapons. James always changed at the first possible opportunity, and she’d been avoiding thinking about why. But it suited her now.

She pushed him down onto his knees, and he stared at her like he was a dog and she had a treat— worshipful, hopeful, wide-eyed, avid. “You’re going to help me with this zipper, aren’t you?”

He moved his hand, and she fended it off and slid her fingers around the back of his neck instead, bending so the zipper pull of her tac suit, perched just above her breasts where she normally locked it in place, was in reach of his teeth.  She toyed with it, flipping it so the locking pin came out and the pull hung free. He hesitated, wavering between worship and hunger, then took the pull delicately between his upper and lower incisors, lips pulled back out of the way, and tugged it down.

The tac suit wasn’t all that sexy in reality, with a sweaty sports bra and fireproof underwear underneath it, but she knew that wasn’t going to deter him. He pulled the zipper all the way down to her waist, and she unbuckled the two belts she wore to let him get it open all the way down.

“Is it okay?” he said, shaking his head a little as if to recall himself, and looking up at her.

“Okay what,” she asked, confused.

“If we,” he said, and ran his hand up her thigh. “If I.” He seemed to be struggling to find words, like something was pulling his ability to think under.

Ah.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll keep watch. And I’ll give you what you need.” She shucked the sleeves of her tac suit and unfastened the hooks of the bra— it was too structured to be a pull-on— and yanked it off, and he sat on his heels and stared up at her bared breasts like he wasn’t sure whether to pray to them or devour them. He was unsettlingly intense, and it was making little thrills shoot straight from her belly button up her spine.

Probably would have been more comfortable and convenient to keep this under wraps until they got back to the safe house, she thought, as the cold air tightened her skin, but she could improvise, and she didn’t want to keep driving with this crawling up her spine. Whatever it was, it had to be worse for him, that he’d start something like this here.

She had, to work with, a shed, some duffel bags, and a Jeep with no roof or doors. Well. She retrieved her pistols from her thigh holsters, set them on the dashboard, stepped sideways and sat on the edge of the passenger seat of the Jeep, and directed him to take her boots off her, and then pull her tac suit down off her legs, and she could see so clearly that he wanted nothing in the world more than to put his face between her thighs, so she made him take her underpants off with his teeth, to tease him with it. He did as he was told, and there was no humor or resentment or pleading, he only stared with ravenous adoration at her, almost-palpably vibrating with restrained intensity.

If she were anything less than she were, she thought, she’d be afraid of him. He was completely, utterly submerged in focus on his task, and on her, and he would do anything, she knew. Anything at all. And if she made him do something she shouldn’t, it would break him and he’d destroy her.

“Good boy,” she said quietly, as he managed to work the underwear down off her legs. He looked up at her, waiting, and she said, “All right, you deserve a treat.”

Despite their physically-demanding morning, there was no hesitation in his movements. He shot up and buried his face between her thighs, and she gasped a little and tipped her head back as he went to work in earnest. He knew her, knew her body, knew her preferences and the fine details of her anatomy, and coupled with his unusual intensity he brought her straight to the edge in no time, with enough force that she was shoved most of the way back in the seat. She held onto his hair with one hand, and one of her pistols with the other, to remind herself she was supposed to be the lookout, even as she slid right along the edge of coming.

It was hard to maintain any kind of attention when her whole body was all electric sparks and bright edges, but she did. “James,” she said, controlling her breath and her voice, “come up here, I want you in me.”

He stopped instantly, pulling back with only one last longing look, and his attention snapped to her face. “Yes, Natasha,” he said, and she sat him in the car seat, got his flies open and straddled his lap, and he bit both his lips and stared up at her as she engulfed his cock and pressed her body to his, her breasts in his face, her thighs around his waist.

“Mine,” she said to him, and pulled his hair, yanking his head back a little. She still had her pistol in one hand. “I’ve got you,” she reminded him. “I’m keeping watch. You’re mine, no one else will touch you.”

“Yes,” he said, eyes blank as he stared up through her; his hands were around her hips but he wasn’t holding on in particular.

It felt really fucking good to have him in her, the way he filled her, hot and thick and perfect, and she rolled her hips and sighed as pleasure sparked in warm arcs all up her spine.

“Fuck me,” she said, and he moaned so quiet it was barely more than a sigh, grabbing on to her hips to give himself some leverage as he snapped his hips up. Oh, it was good, it was really good, and she grabbed his hair to steady herself, and made herself look over his shoulder to keep watch like she’d said she would.

The warmth of his body spread through her, replacing the body heat the cold air had leached away, but she didn’t let herself make any sound, even as she started to tremble on the edge again. “Don’t come,” she murmured. “Don’t come until I say you can.”

He tipped his head back and set his jaw, staring fiercely at nothing— concentrating, she realized, because he was close too, almost as close as she was. She tightened her grip on his hair, holding his head back. “Look at me,” she said. “I want you to get me off.”

“Yes,” he managed to say, and looked at her, though he didn’t quite focus. He was so pretty, he was so terrifying, he was hers, and she yanked on his hair and he fucked her harder and she was almost there but not quite.

He surged forward, jaw clenched shut, and lifted her, setting her back against the dashboard, supporting most of her weight in his arms, so he could fuck deeper and harder into her, and that was it, that was what she’d needed. She cried out in startlement and then shuddered, crying out again as she came, as sensation swept out along her limbs and back in, and she came and came, clenched around him.

She shoved him back down into the seat and yanked his head back by the hair and hissed, “Now, you can come now,” and he sobbed desperately and clung to her and thrust up into her. She was still shivery from how hard she’d come, but she watched him fall apart completely, burying himself in her, arms around her and face in her breasts and his whole body shivering.

“Good boy,” she murmured, petting his hair. She collected herself enough to look around, and set the pistol down to put both hands into his hair. “Such a good boy. So good to me.”

He shivered in her arms, keeping his face buried, and she kissed his head and held him. She was still a little shaky herself. He’d known what she’d needed to get off, and so since she’d told him to, he’d done what it took. He was— if she’d told him anything then, he’d have done it, whatever it was, she had no doubt. God. It was a good thing he really was that good.

“James,” she murmured, and his hair tie was long gone, his hair so soft in her hands, his body so warm against hers, and he was still inside her, going soft but not all the way there yet. She didn’t want to move but they really shouldn’t stay here, she wasn’t keeping all that effective a lookout. “Such a good boy. So good, so so good.”

“Natasha,” he managed finally, muffled in her breasts. His stubble was prickling her a little. She supposed that was going to have to suffice as the necessary impetus to end this very comforting and sweet but impractical embrace.

She sat back, and he let her go, looking up at her with a sweetly blissed-out, but slightly concerned, expression. He needed to be held more, she could tell.

She ruffled his hair. “Stay here,” she said. “I gotta put some clothes on and load the car. Good boy.”

He nodded, wordless and pliant, and she got off him. He got himself together enough to fix his clothing, then sat blankly in the seat, radiating vulnerability. She hurried, pulled on her clothes and loaded the rest of the stuff into the Jeep, and wished it were a car with a roof and a door so she could close him in and keep him safer.

Instead she got into the Jeep, looking respectable and unsuspicious in her civvies, and leaned over and put her hand around the back of his neck. “Such a good boy,” she said, and he shivered a little and leaned into her touch. She smiled at him, and tugged his hood up and pulled the zipper all the way up to his chin. “Stay warm, we’ll be at the safe house soon.”

He nodded, still blank but a bit more attentive, and nestled himself down into the seat. He had come back to himself enough by the time they reached the safehouse to help her unload the Jeep, and he helped her, wordlessly but competently, check and clear the safehouse. It was an old farm house, sporadically occupied by vacationers and regularly swept for bugs or listening devices or any sign of unusual interest.

James was standing in the kitchen with his head cocked as she came back down the rear stairwell. He moved a pace forward, reached up with the metal fingers, and pulled down a small bug from the top of the doorframe. Looking at it for a moment, he turned it over. “Inactive but connected,” he said. “SHIELD.” He tipped his head questioningly at her.

It was probably supposed to be there. But she wasn’t in the mood. She nodded. “Squash it.”

He ground it to powder and dropped it down the sink, flushing it with water. Effective. If they used it, as she supposed, to verify that the house was unoccupied, they’d just have to replace it, preferably with something a little less intrusive. She wasn’t here to do freaky shit with James for some bored tech’s amusement.

He turned back to her, still silent and glowering, and she felt something strange twist in her stomach, something protective. She wanted to make it so he never had to put on the tac gear he so clearly disliked wearing, so he never had to do the violent work at which he excelled but which made him so bone-grindingly tense. She never wanted to clean blood off him, never wanted to see his blank-eyed checked-out stare.

But that wasn’t the kind of life she lived, either. She had amends to make, and so could not abandon the lifestyle. As if the lifestyle would ever let her go. And she didn’t have the power or the authority to set him free either.

Just, when he looked at her like that, it made it feel like it was her decision.

She didn’t know what to say to him, so she said nothing, turning away and going into the living room. It was shabby but comfortable, with faded, dingy overstuffed armchairs and some washed-to-faded quilts slung over the backs. She sat in an armchair, and James hovered in the doorway while she turned her phone on and looked through her notifications.

After a moment, she looked over at him. He wasn’t looking around the room like he didn’t trust it, he was just watching her. As if he wanted something.

Well, she hadn’t held him long enough, she was sure. But she didn’t feel like snuggling now, it wasn’t something she was overly fond of.

Experimentally, she patted the edge of the chair, and he came over instantly and knelt next to where her feet would be if she didn’t have her legs tucked up under her. She put her hand tentatively into his hair and he leaned into it, pressed himself against the chair, and let out a quiet but profound sigh.

She pulled up the security monitors on the TV with her phone, and went back to browsing her notifications as he sat at her feet and zoned the fuck out. How nice for him, she thought a little sourly, but she watched him breathing deep and steady and couldn’t really find it in her heart to resent this.

“I’m not your handler,” she said hours later, ruffling his hair as she got to her feet to go to bed.

He blinked up at her, surfacing slowly. “I know,” he said, then frowned. “I wouldn’t do that with a handler.” He sounded horrified that she’d think that.

On impulse she answered, “Don’t do that with anybody but me.”

His mouth opened slightly, then he smiled slowly, expression warm and pleased and a little sly. “I wouldn’t,” he said.

 

She wasn’t a snuggler in her sleep either, but he curled around her and she let him and slept warmer and deeper than she had in a while. She always slept better with him there. In the night when the house creaked he woke faster than her, and was out of bed and patrolling the house before she had even finished sitting up.

She stayed in bed, and checked the security feeds on her phone. They couldn’t be remotely accessed, that was the point, and the vacationers who sometimes stayed here wouldn’t know how to access them without the custom SHIELD app that made them work. Wouldn’t even know there was a security system beyond the basic lock and punchcode panel.

They showed nothing, and so when James came back, barefoot and soft in his underwear and t-shirt, she had already rolled over and pulled the covers back up. “Just the wind,” she hazarded.

“Old timbers,” he answered, and climbed back into the bed, shoving the gun back under the pillow. He wrapped himself around her again, but this time his hands didn’t settle on her waist or her leg, but roved up, fondling her breasts, down to her ass, and his mouth slid hot and wet across where her neck met her shoulder. She made a little noise and tipped her head back; she’d normally not have been interested because it was the middle of the goddamn night and she was tired, but he smelled so good, his hands were so warm--

“James,” she said, and it came out low and hoarse.

“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” he asked, picking his head up to look down at her over her shoulder.

“Maybe,” she said unsteadily. He moved his hand forward from her ass, sliding it down under the waistband of her underpants, and she adjusted her position to give him more room to move.

“Mutual orgasms usually help me drop right back to sleep,” he said, wasting no time.

“That’s an offer,” she said, “I can’t-- oh-- refuse--” He already had his fingers inside her, working her open, just right.

“I miss you, baby, when I go away,” he said. “I don’t mean to be all lone wolf. I gotta take care of stuff on my own sometimes. But that don’t mean I don’t think about you all the time.”

He was trying to short-circuit her speech centers, and this was the way he had serious talks with her, by saying it when she couldn’t call him on it. And he was good, and it was good, and she was moving herself against him mostly on instinct, but she could still talk. “I worry about you when you’re gone,” she said, breathless. “James, I-- I’m not good at relationships, I don’t ever know what to say-- oh fuck, _ohh_ , oh _fuck_ ,” and she gritted her teeth and came, gasping, shoving down against his fingers.

“Oh baby,” he said, “oh, doll, oh Natasha,” and he was breathing hard in her ear, kissing and biting at her neck.

“Fuck,” she panted, shaking, and yanked her underpants down, “fuck me, James,” this was the kind of orgasm that would build, and she needed more.

“Yeah,” he said, “okay,” fumbling with his clothes, and she shoved her ass back against him and he fit up against her and slid into her.

“Oh God,” she said, “fuck, yes, like that,” and he fucked into her, gripping her hip tightly, and in his quest for leverage he wound up half on top of her, and she was lying partly bent mostly on her face with her ass tipped up to him, back arched, thighs spread wide, him on top of her from behind, and in her half-asleep state she was making all kinds of desperate little noises as she tried to take him deeper, angling her hips hungrily to get him just where she wanted him. “Oh fuck,” she cried, “fuck, James, you fuck me so good, oh God, like that, come on,” and it was okay because it was pretty muffled into the pillow, even if they’d missed a bug or two on this sweep it wouldn’t be a lot for the tech to go on, maybe she sounded like a porno cliche but she was getting fucked so good she didn’t care. And even though it really wasn’t her thing, she thought with a little bit of satisfaction at some bored schmoe of a SHIELD tech trying to parse the muffled audio and figure out how Natasha Romanoff liked it, and they’d never figure it out from this, not even if there was video too; they’d never figure out that what she liked was however James Barnes was giving it to her.

Which was a hell of a thing to realize, but it didn’t matter; she gasped and cried out in what was a perfectly reasonable fashion given that he was a super-soldier who knew her body inside and out better than she did herself, and shuddered into a tremendously powerful full-body orgasm that made him groan too. He followed her over the edge, shuddering and clamping down on her hips with what she knew was only a fraction of the force he could muster with both of his hands.

“Oh fuck,” he moaned, still moving in her, “oh God, oh fuck.”

“Stay in me,” she gasped, clutching at him, she couldn’t bear to lose this closeness, this pressure, it was so good, “oh, stay-- stay in me--”

He grabbed her by the hips and pulled her up, getting up onto his knees and pulling her up into his lap, and he was so far inside her, all the way in, it forced a groan out of her as she settled down onto him. She held onto his forearms where they were wrapped around her waist. “Baby,” he said, his face in her neck, “I will stay in you as long as you want.”

“Forever,” she said, and laughed shakily, but he was still hard, and she was still hungry.

“I can only go three days without water,” he said, “but I might be able to sustain an erection longer than that, if it’s an experiment you want to make.”

“You ass,” she laughed on a gasp, “see if I try to use romantic hyperbole on you,” and he moved in her teasingly and made her shudder, fuck, it was like he was filling her whole body.

“I love it when you sweet talk, doll,” he said, kissing her neck and fondling her breasts and rocking his hips just so, sending little sparks skittering up her spine.

“Ass,” she stuttered, “you’re a jackass,” and he bit her neck and fucked her and she shivered, hard. He pressed his fingers against her clit and it was too much, she pushed his hand down so the heel of his hand was pressed there instead, and ground herself against him, breath coming hard.

“I love it when you not-sweet talk too,” he said in her ear.

“Stop talking shit,” she ground out, and her whole body had gone far away, moving on its own and taking what it needed from him, and she had started to shiver somewhere deep in her core.

“I love you,” he said, amused, like it was a secret he’d just found out and was sharing with her because it would amuse her too.

“You jackass,” she said, and all the sensation came sweeping back as the shivering went violent and spread out her limbs, and she cried out helplessly, shaking and shaking and clinging to him, making breathy little high-pitched noises like the kind she’d never believed were really sincere in pornos but couldn’t stop making now.

It took for-goddamn-ever for it to pass and give her back control over herself, and she was so wrung-out and exhausted she just went limp in his arms. He murmured sweet things to her and this time she didn’t protest when he pulled out and left her empty and a little sore, because he didn’t go away, he kissed her and tucked himself around her and rearranged her nightclothes so they weren’t bunched up.

She fell asleep before he was finished putting things to rights, and woke hours later to an empty bed.

 

She found James in the kitchen, making breakfast from the semi- and non-perishables in the pantry. Pancake mix. Genius. He looked like himself, looked healthy and normal and whole, both shoulders moving well, and he smiled at her, human and easy. “There you are,” she said, like she’d wondered or something.

“Morning, beautiful,” he said, and pointed at the toaster oven, which was full of already-finished pancakes.

She laughed at him, and helped herself, and as she was eating he was watching her. Finally she said, “What?”

He shook his head, and turned the frying pan off, retrieving the last pancake from it to slide it onto his own plate and sit down to eat. “Nothin’,” he said.

She regarded him suspiciously. “You aren’t all that good at keeping secrets,” she observed.

“That was never my specialty,” he said. She continued to regard him, waiting, and sure enough, he broke. “Fine,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I figured out that you’re not her.”

“Not who,” she asked, but something went cold in her gut.

“You and the-- the person I mistook you for,” he said. “You’re not the same person. I mean, I knew that, but-- I’m sure now.” He shrugged. “It shouldn’t matter, to you, I just.” He fidgeted with his fork.

“I’m not her,” she said, blank as she thought that through.

“You already knew that,” he said. He looked uncomfortable now. “And I-- I knew that, I just-- I hadn’t really accepted it.”

“You still thought I was her,” Natasha said carefully.

“No,” he said, frowning at his pancakes. “But-- I hadn’t-- parts of me weren’t sure. Now I know.”

She thought asking was a bad idea, but she had to know, she just had to. “What made you sure?”

He cut his pancakes with the side of his fork, as if it required all of his attention. “I,” he said, frowning intently at the plate. “I wouldn’t have done that with her. What we did. Any-- pretty much any of that.”

Natasha sat back in her chair. “You,” she said, but she didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

“I trust you more than I ever trusted her,” he said. “And I-- I think you trust me more than she did. I don’t-- I don’t remember why, or-- I don’t know, but I know, okay? You’re not her. I loved her and she’s dead,” and his fork screeched on the plate, “but not like-- not like I — love you.”

She stared at him, and there should be an easy and sweet answer here, it was far from the first time a man had made that kind of declaration to her-- but he’d said it before, hadn’t he? and then she remembered when-- the previous night, and in response she’d called him a jackass, but more in general than specific. And her mouth moved, and normally her autopilot was really good but instead it came out with, “and you’re sure she’s dead?”

He put his fork down, and chewed and swallowed. “It was the Kruschev administration,” he said, giving her an incredulous look. “I know it’s all muddled but I do remember her mentioning that she’d lived through the seige of Stalingrad.”

“You and I know both know that doesn’t mean she’s dead,” Natasha said. Why was she asking him this? Why did she think this was the thing to say? Why could she not answer him, in the way a normal woman would to a man who’d just said something like that to her? It had been easy to do, before, and she knew it was important to do, and there had been no effort to it, to sound sincere and answer back-- but of course, it was because none of them had mattered.

And oh, fuck. He mattered. And it was important. And she had absolutely no practice at that, when it mattered to her and not a mission.

“If they bothered to overwrite her,” James said, “even though I was only ever meant to be a hollow shell of programming over a core of obedient instinct-- doesn’t that say to you that they really wanted her gone?”

“What if she did it herself?” Natasha asked.

“Then she wanted herself gone,” he said, quiet and patient. “She didn’t want me anymore, if she did it. If she didn’t, they didn’t want me to want her anymore.”

“Why me, then?” she asked. “Why put me in?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Whether you were the likeliest candidate, or--” He paused, regarding her keenly for a moment, and in that moment she felt overwhelmingly how much older he really was than her. “You know as well as I do that erasing is hard, but overwriting is easy,” he said. “That’s why they do this. Clearly she was important, and the way to break my reliance on her was to make her into someone else.”

“Why me,” Natasha said quietly, and it was staggeringly clear to both of them that it wasn’t a real question, it was the plaintive whine of someone who wished none of it had ever happened.

“All I know,” James said, looking away, down at his hands, and he picked up his fork again. “All I know is that it isn’t anything I would have wanted, no matter what the truth of it was-- no matter how much she hurt me, I wouldn’t have wanted to forget. I know from the beginning I’ve never wanted them to alter any of my memories, I’ve always fought them even if I wasn’t sure why.”

Natasha nodded, staring at him and feeling small, stupid, incompetent, unable to cope, everything a Black Widow wasn’t. She felt like a stupid little girl, and she didn’t know what to do, and she’d never really felt like that before. That she could remember.

That she could remember.

Of course, there was a lot she couldn’t, and it was worse because she had no idea what it was.

And somewhere deep down in her heart, some part had her had really believed all along, despite the preponderance of evidence, despite the insurmountable impossibility of it, that she was really the same woman James had always loved.

 

It was a couple of hours of quiet, desultory conversation later-- finishing breakfast, washing dishes, remaking the bed, washing the sheets along with their mission-soiled clothes, drying everything, repacking their stuff into the nondescript sedan waiting in the garage to replace the distinctive Jeep-- that Natasha finally found enough of her composure to put her hand on James’s shoulder.

He turned to look at her, looking solemn and slightly concerned in the dim light of the garage.

“If it’s just that they overwrote her in your memory,” she said quietly, “then why do I have-- echoes?”

“Echoes,” he said.

She couldn’t maintain eye contact. She let go and fidgeted with the keychain. It had a Captain America logo shield as a decorative fob, and she wondered who had done that. “I know things I couldn’t know about you,” she said. “I feel like I-- I expect things I shouldn’t know to expect. I know things about you I don’t remember learning. I-- there’s something else going on.”

He was looking at her, but she didn’t know what his expression was. She couldn’t look at him. “I don’t know,” he said finally.

“If they were just trying to get rid of her, why would they implant memories of you in me?” she asked.

“You think they gave you her memories?” He reached over and took her arm. His hand was big enough to go most of the way around her bicep, just like Steve’s was, but James never manhandled her like that, not to control her. He had only ever grabbed her for something she was in on, like to support her during fighting or sex, or dancing. Not even when she’d fought with him, before he’d broken free of HYDRA-- he’d thrown her, but he hadn’t muscled her around the way Steve sometimes did.

So he was holding her arm gently, and she could pull away easily, and she wished he’d just get angry with her, because then she’d know what this conversation was, and what to do with it.

He loved her, and she was going to wreck that. Nobody had ever loved her who knew her. Not-- like that.

“Maybe she did it,” she said quietly, and she wasn’t sure where it was coming from. “Maybe she was getting old and she wanted someone younger to take over where she left off. Or maybe she’d screwed it up and she wanted someone else to have another chance. Maybe she loved you, James, and wanted it to work out for you.”

She absolutely couldn’t look at his face. He’d taken her arm with his right hand, which left only the metal hand free, and he brought it to her chin, cradling his jaw in the eerily warm metal fingers. It felt like a normal hand, but it smelled like metal. She tipped her chin up for him but didn’t raise her eyes, but was close enough that her peripheral vision could make out that he was smiling slightly.

“Maybe that’s it,” he said. “Or maybe the handler tasked with removing her from me loved her too, and wanted her to survive somewhere, so he put some echoes of her into you. It makes sense they’d have tried to capture some of her memories, even if they were decommissioning her.”

She had to look at him then, and the pale blue of his eyes was stunning at this range, driving what little self-possession she had right out of her head. “Maybe she loved you,” she said, again. “Maybe she did it herself.”

“We’ll never know,” James said, smile wry but sweet. She had to kiss him then, and did, and he kissed her back.

“We already changed the sheets,” she said breathlessly, after a long moment, “and swept the whole house--”

“We don’t have to go back in there,” he said, and kissed her again. “We could do just fine out here.”

“Surely,” she said, shivering deliciously as he ran his tongue along her lower lip, “we’ve had plenty of sex in the last twelve hours.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but we could have more.” He slid his mouth along the edge of her jaw and she sighed, eyes rolling shut quite without her permission. “It’s not like there’s any reason not to.”

She wanted to, she really did. Maybe the garage was bugged, though; they hadn’t swept it that thoroughly. “Are you willing to find out that there was a surveillance camera in here by this being your leaked sex tape?” she asked breathlessly.

James, damn him, looked _interested_.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been waiting forever to use the scene with Natasha watching an explosion in her rear-view mirror. I wrote it a while ago and wanted to make it a standalone story, but that doesn't work with this structure. The rear-view mirror line, though-- that was literally all I cared about in that scene and so the rest of it was kind of a surprise to me. No, I'm not going to make this a BDSM lifestyle fic, James just really wanted to be held until nothing inside him was jangling anymore, and that was the only framework she had to understand the request he couldn't make.  
> I'm very emphatically not a three-little-words kind of person, but I figure Bucky would be, a little bit, at least in bed. Natasha, however; no. 
> 
> And the blanket fort-- I got a lot of feedback on the last chapter that Bucky's suicide-prevention video rang true, which is both great and terrible; great, because I was being serious and sincere, terrible because that's an awful thing to know about. And I just figured I'd follow up with a perhaps wretched but also sincere self-care blanket fort. And then later I'd let him get what he needed from Natasha, on some level. She can't fix him, but she can help, a lot.


	12. Alright, OK, You Win

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sharon Carter is a True American Hero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enormous thanks to [s-leary](http://s-leary.tumblr.com/), [iiii78](http://iiii78.tumblr.com/), and [this-is-furious](http://this-is-furious.tumblr.com/) for looking this over and helping me make consistency edits! This goes down in history as the first time I've had anything more or less properly beta'd in a very long time! :)
> 
> TW, or warning, maybe?: a woman discovers that she has been videotaped during intimacy, and eventually decides not to be upset about it because of mitigating factors (low-res surveillance camera and no deliberate intent)-- just, if that kind of betrayal upsets you, brace yourself a little. And in real life the victim would not be under any obligation to be so forgiving, but this is Fiction and there are Fictional Mitigating Factors that are very much not real life. (namely the perp has forgotten how humans human.)

 

“Natasha,” Sharon said, nearly managing to startle her.

“Sneaking up on me is a terrible fucking idea,” Natasha said, turning around slowly. Sharon was-- sort of okay, Natasha liked her, cared about her, but she kind of had obnoxious habits, and she flirted dirty with Steve which would be fine, even hilarious, except Steve clearly didn’t exactly enjoy it most of the time, and it was just a little bit over a line, and so was this.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Sharon said, flickering to alarmed formality before sliding back to smiling friendliness. “But I ah. I confiscated something I thought you’d like to see.” She had a little thumb drive in her hand.

Natasha stared at it. She ought to do Smiling Friendly persona. She usually did, with Sharon, and to an extent it was even sincere, and women had to stick together in this environment and Sharon was a valuable contact, connected as she was. She worked for the CIA and didn’t come around all that much, and the appropriate thing was to ask after her current personal status, and Natasha just didn’t have it in her right this moment.

“I’ve had way too much coffee today,” Natasha said, and only its plausible truth kept her from going full robot. “It is not a good day to spring stuff on me. Please tell me this isn’t something drastic.”

“Well,” Sharon said, hesitating a little. “I uh. Maybe I should just cut to the chase and tell you I intercepted this and kicked up a huge fuss as the Avengers’ liason within the CIA and got them to torch every single copy of this footage except this one.”

“Footage,” Natasha said, staring at the thumb drive between Sharon’s fingers. Sharon had a slightly-wrecked nice manicure, eloquent testament to the fact that she was a practical appointee to a political position, that she used those hands in a society that badly wanted to believe her role ought to be decorative, and that she tried to make the necessary concessions to let those who wanted her to be decorative think she was.

“Yes,” Sharon said hesitantly, and Natasha was suddenly, blindingly certain of what it was.

“The CIA had that fucking place bugged,” she said, incredulous. “The _CIA_?”

“SHIELD has to report to various other government agencies,” Sharon said, almost apologetically. She put the thumb drive into Natasha’s hand. “There’s oversight to all this reporting, and that’s why I was notified instantly that this footage existed, as soon as your face triggered the facial recognition software, and so I was present the first time they watched it. And as soon as I saw what it was, I made them shut it down and give me the only copy. Nobody has seen this all the way through except me.” She blushed. “I had to, Natasha, they needed a report.”

Natasha looked at the thumb drive, and turned and went straight to her locker in the locker room, and pulled her personal laptop out of her locker. She swiped her thumbprint to wake the thing up, stuck the thumb drive in, and opened the video file. Thank God, or whoever, or heaven, or anything, for Sharon, social awkwardnesses be damned; this is the currency Natasha wanted. Solid ally actions.

Sure enough, it was the safehouse garage, and them coming out the door. You couldn’t really see any detail, but she was recognizable, height and build and posture, ah there was the shot of her face that had surely triggered the software, and there she was grabbing James’s arm, and he turned, giving the camera a good view of his face too as he did so, and looked solemnly at her. They spoke for a moment, and then she kissed him, and-- you couldn’t see much detail but their body language was unmistakable, this wasn’t feigned or staged, they were sincere and uncalculated.

“Right there,” Natasha said, pointing to herself, as she pulled back to look up at James’s face. “Right there is where I asked James if he really wanted to find out the hard way that there was a surveillance camera.” It was clear enough that she could see her mouth moving, though she couldn’t read her own lips. “You’re sure there’s no audio?”

“No audio,” Sharon said. Good, because that had been a pretty serious conversation.

James looked straight at the camera for an instant. Natasha paused it. He’d grinned at her, the camera not capturing the details she’d remembered-- the way his eyebrows had moved, how his eyes had glittered with challenge, the precise curl of his lip-- and then he’d glanced over and looked straight at the camera. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

“He _knew_ ,” Natasha said. “He _knew_ it was there. I’ll kill him!” How had he known? But he’d done the same, finding the inactive SHIELD bug-- he had either the most uncanny intuition, or his hearing was augmented enough-- but it couldn’t be hearing, it would have to be some other sense. She couldn’t imagine. She had to use a sensor in her phone combined with an educated intuition about where people normally hid such devices, and she still sometimes didn’t catch them all.

“That’s,” Sharon said a little uncertainly, hovering just at the edge of where she could see the screen, “I mean, that’s-- that’s him, right? The Winter Soldier?”

On-screen, she tipped her head back and opened her mouth silently as he picked her up and pinned her against the side of the car. She remembered she’d made an embarrassing noise. “Thank God there’s no audio,” she said, “I’d die of mortification.”

“You can’t,” Sharon said, “really, see anything-- in particular.” James opened the car door and deposited her into the back seat of the car, laughing, then crawled in after her. “I mean. You can. Kind of. Get the, y’know. Gist.”

“Did you provide all the details in your report?” Natasha asked dryly. Yeah, you couldn’t see much, but you could see her feet, and you could see that his head was just below her waist level, from a tiny edge of it visible over the car seat, and from how his foot was braced outside the car door.

“No,” Sharon said, “I just said that the two SHIELD agents seemed to engage in intimate, adult activities confined in location to the back seat of the agency car, for a duration of under half an hour, and then seemed to leave in good spirits afterward, and that it seemed not to have been a cover for any other activity but that there was not enough information to be certain.”

“Did you at least identify us?” Natasha asked.

“No,” she said. “But, well, one of the other techs saw your face in those first few frames pretty clearly.”

“Nobody else identified him?” Natasha asked skeptically. His face had been clear too. There wasn’t much to look at currently in the video, just his legs trailing out of the car. She remembered how enthusiastic but gentle he’d been, and how efficient. One of her feet was visible in the footage now, fumbling to brace itself against the doorframe. “Thank God there’s no audio, I remember the noise I was making just there. Christ.” That had been her first orgasm of the encounter.

“So uh,” Sharon said. “Uh. It um. Not to be, you know. But um.”

“He is _extremely_ good in bed,” Natasha said. She owed Sharon this much, and in perpetuity, for this good deed. “You don’t have to put that in your report, but you can if you want.”

“I figured he’d be really... old-fashioned,” Sharon said.

Natasha slanted a look over at her. On-screen, she knew she had planted both feet onto the seat of the car and was shuddering and shuddering through another orgasm, but you couldn’t really tell at all. Sometimes you could see his head moving over the edge of the seat, if she shuddered with particular enthusiasm or he pulled back to breathe. “I don’t know what that means,” she said.

“You know,” Sharon said. “Not like… that.”

“They didn’t invent oral sex in the 80s,” Natasha said. “You know pretty much anything you can imagine, people have been doing since before there were history books.”

“I know _that_ ,” Sharon said, very pink.

“Hey, Thirteen! What’re we watchin’?” Jessica Drew asked from the doorway. Natasha glanced up, but made no move to stop the video. Sharon only blushed deeper. Jess came in and peered around the edge of the screen. “Surveillance video. Of a car. Of-- oh.” Onscreen, Natasha picked a foot up and braced it against the ceiling of the car as James redoubled his efforts. “That’s a person’s leg.”

“That’s me,” Natasha said, “unaware there was a surveillance camera.”

“And that’s a pair of legs there, those are definitely a man’s boots,” Jess said. “And-- what the fuck is he doing?”

“If your mom didn’t explain these things to you, _I’m_ sure not going to,” Sharon said.

“Oh Jesus fuck,” Jess said, “it’s your sextape.”

“Yeah,” Natasha said. “He knew the camera was there.”

Jess stopped immediately, more power to her, and stared in horror at Natasha. “No!” she said. “Oh-- oh fuck, Romanoff, are we killing him? Is this posted somewhere? Are we torching the entire Internet?”

“I intercepted it,” Sharon said, muted. “It’s not-- like that.”

“Thank fuck,” Jess said, “I’m not that good a hacker.” She peered at the screen again. “Is he just-- _epically_ eating your pussy?”

“Yes,” Natasha said. “I’m just really grateful there’s no audio because I was making some pretty incriminating noises by this point.” He picked his head up, visible over the seat a little bit, and she knew he was using his fingers just then, wringing her over the edge twice in quick succession, and she’d been just about screaming, and then he’d ducked his head back down.

“I didn’t,” Jess said, “wow. Uh.” She tilted her head. “Who is he and is he single? Uh, once we’re done killing him for betraying you.”

Natasha sighed, and rubbed her face. “We’re not killing him,” she said. “He wouldn’t consider this betraying me. He has different parameters for that sort of thing.”

“Huh,” Jess said. She was shamelessly just watching, tilting her head as if it would improve the view. A moment of weighty silence passed, and on-screen Natasha’s leg slipped from where it was braced against the ceiling as she had another orgasm and lost control of her limbs momentarily. “He’s, ah. Still going, huh?”

“Yup,” Natasha said. It was approximately the least-sexy sex tape ever. “I think this is revenge, for him, for me posting the video where he’s doing the Single Ladies dance.”

“What video is this?” Jess asked, glancing over at her. “Single Ladies dance?” She frowned, and Natasha watched her put it together. “Wait, that’s the-- is that the W--”

“Yeah,” Sharon said.

“This is a video of the Winter Soldier,” Jess said, “noted international assassin and agent of chaos, having sex in the back of a car with the legendary Black Widow.”

“You’d think it would be less boring,” Natasha said. “Oh, there I go again.” One of her feet appeared briefly above the back seat of the car as she rearranged position.

“Did you get off?” Jess asked.

“Psh,” Natasha said, “like eight times.”

“And that didn’t tip you off that he was showing off for somebody?” Jess asked, pained.

Natasha slid a look over at her. “It would have had to be _unusual_ for it to tip me off,” she said. Sharon made a little choking noise. Jessica literally boggled at her.

“Why is everyone upset?” Wanda asked from the door. “Or-- I don’t know what everyone is doing, you’re all freaking out.”

“Sharon just saved Natasha’s sex tape from getting leaked on the Internet,” Jess said.

“She’s a real American hero,” Natasha pointed out, and remembered belatedly that Wanda probably hadn’t been subjected to 1980s American cartoons as she had. Sharon got it, though, and rolled her eyes, amused.

“Sex,” Wanda said blankly, “tape, wait, like, a pornographic video?”

“Well,” Natasha said, gesturing at the screen. “For sufficiently uninformative values of such.”

Wanda looked at the tape. Onscreen, you could see one of Natasha’s feet again, and James had hitched himself a little further into the car, one foot firmly braced and one knee up into the door. “I,” she said. “I must be missing something.”

“He’s been going down on her for like twenty minutes,” Jess said.

“Going,” Wanda said, and stopped talking, and Natasha knew she didn’t know that phrase.

“Oral sex,” Natasha said in Russian. “When he puts his mouth on your intimate parts.”

Wanda blinked at her. “I, oh,” she said. Her eyebrows went up as that sank in. “Oh! I-- I thought only…” She fumbled the Russian word, then instead said, “Women loving women.”

“Lesbians,” Natasha said, still in Russian.

“Lesbians,” Wanda echoed. “I thought only lesbians did that.”

“No,” Natasha said, and she knew then, that Wanda had never really had very much of this sort of relationship, and she understood, and they regarded one another for a moment, one girl child soldier to another, and Natasha smiled kindly. “No, and if a man won’t do it and you want him to, then don’t sleep with him.”

“I see,” Wanda said.

Sharon knew Russian reasonably well, but from Jessica’s expression, she didn’t. Sharon was watching the video, looking faintly concerned.

“It’s clearly not as incriminating as I had been worried it might be,” Natasha said.

“Does it get good later?” Jess asked.

“No,” Natasha said, then glanced over at Sharon. “Not unless it’s been doctored.”

“It hasn’t been altered at all,” Sharon said.

“Doesn’t he fuck you next?” Jess asked. “Or at least you return the favor?”

Natasha shook her head. “No,” she said. When she had finally grabbed him by the hair and pulled him off her he had just wiped his face off, licked his fingers, adjusted himself in his pants, and driven them home. “I offered, but-- he got what he wanted, he was all set.”

“Really,” Jess said.

Sure enough, onscreen, James sat up, laughing, hair loose and dramatically tousled. He glanced toward the camera, grinning wickedly. God, even in the grainy footage, he was so pretty, his smile like sunshine even when you couldn’t see the laugh lines around his eyes. He sat, turned away from the camera, for a few moments, and she sat up next to him. “I’m really glad there’s no audio,” she said.

“Were you saying mushy stuff?” Jess asked.

“I think I called him a jackass,” Natasha admitted. Onscreen, James got out of the car, turned slightly away to adjust himself in his jeans, and shook his hair back, still laughing down at her. Natasha, onscreen, was putting her clothes to rights and complaining about how badly he’d wrecked her hair, trying to finger-comb it back to respectability..

“He’s,” Wanda said, and bit it back. Everyone looked at her, and she blushed. “He’s more attractive than I thought he was.”

“He really didn’t make you reciprocate,” Jess said, like she couldn’t believe it. “Look at him! He’s walking funny! He’s-- is that _all him_?”

Natasha squinted one eye. “I think that’s just a fold in his jeans,” she said, “his dick’s bigger than that.” Jess shrieked. Wanda looked a little lost.

“He looks pretty satisfied to me,” Sharon said, sliding Natasha a look. James leaned on the car door, all long lean grace and a lazy smirk, and held out his hand as Natasha climbed out of the car seat. He pulled her in and kissed her gently, and she tipped her head back for him, all languid with endorphins and visibly besotted.

“You look really happy,” Jess said.

“I told you,” Natasha said crossly, and it was itching at her, how obvious she was being, how clearly she hadn’t known she was being recorded, “I’d just spent like a quarter hour in a pretty constant state of orgasm, that tends to be pretty intensely pleasant.”

James opened the passenger door for her like a fucking ridiculous person, and handed her in, and went around and got in the driver’s side. The video showed the car backing out of range of the camera, and then cut out. She closed the video program. “You’re sure nobody saw this but you.”

“I’m absolutely sure,” Sharon said.

“There’s basically nothing in that video,” Jess pointed out.

“It’s still an invasion of privacy,” Natasha said.

“But there’s nothing to see,” Jessica said.

“There’s always something to see,” Natasha said. She was doing pretty well at being calm. She wasn’t angry with James; he had clearly assessed the camera and determined that nothing usable would come from it. She wondered if he’d known there was no audio.

Probably. They’d said some incriminating shit. He wasn’t a fool about that sort of thing.

“There’s nothing to determine from that footage except that you have an awesome sex life,” Jess said. “And we’re all seethingly jealous of you now. What do you _mean_ his dick’s bigger than that?”

“He’s--   _really hot_ ,” Wanda said again, like it had surprised her. But-- she had met James before, and she’d been young, and she’d probably been terrified of him and thought he was a monster, so it probably had been a pretty significant surprise to see him looking like a human.

“He’s your boyfriend,” Sharon said. “That’s it, isn’t it? That wasn’t an assignation, that wasn’t something you did to get information out of him, that was something you did because you have a serious ongoing relationship with him. That’s pretty obvious from the footage, and that’s really not something any kind of operative is going to want to be public knowledge.”

“Oh,” Jess said.

“That’s not just confirmation of what everyone knew, which is that the Black Widow has been collaborating with the Winter Soldier,” Sharon went on quietly. “That’s additional information: the Black Widow is sentimentally entangled with the Winter Soldier. There’s not enough detail to read lips, but there’s enough detail to discern from the facial expressions and body language that it’s very likely that the conversation they had was highly emotionally-charged, and that the intimate encounter was not planned ahead and was not staged for the benefit of that camera.”

Natasha breathed in slowly, and breathed out. Denying it would only make them tease her about it, would only bring more attention to it. “That’s probably a fair assessment,” she said quietly.

Jess stared at her with tragic huge eyes as if shocked by this. Wanda was clearly thinking it over. “Given that the Black Widow has never, on record, had a genuine romantic relationship, that’s a pretty huge piece of intelligence,” Sharon said. “A lot of agencies would dearly love to know that. Which is why I confiscated the video immediately when I recognized what it was, and in my report, I did not identify him, and left it ambiguous as to whether it was a staged encounter or a real one. Because the CIA doesn’t need that information, and SHIELD doesn’t need that information, and nobody needs that information.” Sharon looked around at each of them in turn, fixing first Jess and then Wanda with a keen stare. “Natasha has put herself on the line for all of us in the past, and so I think it behooves us to keep this little bit of intelligence under wraps, don’t you?”

The other two agreed, and Natasha managed a full breath. “Thank you,” she said.

There was a murmur of assurances, and then Sharon said, after a short pause, “There’s a price, of course.”

Natasha looked up at her. “Oh?”

“Girl’s night, tonight, my place, bring at least a half-gallon of wine, I’ll order pizza, all of you show up, and Natasha is going to tell us more about the kind of man that’ll spend a half an hour eating you out and not want anything in return.” Sharon grinned, eyes sparkling, and Jess lit up. Natasha noticed that Wanda seemed surprised and cautiously delighted to be included.

“I can manage that,” Natasha said. “In return for this favor, I think I can even manage pictures. Just-- call Bobbi too, why don’t you?”

“Good idea,” Sharon said.

 

The video with the shirtless forge scene and the gold booty shorts was an enormous success, and by the end of the evening, Jess and Wanda had stopped being suspicious of each other enough that Jess repeatedly fell over onto Wanda during fits of uncontrollable laughing, and Wanda grew comfortable enough to easily set her back upright, or hang onto her until it eased. No one touched Wanda, Natasha had noticed previously, so this was a nice change.

And spilling some of James’s intimate secrets was probably fair turnabout for him having known that camera was there.

 

____________

 

James was lying on the couch with Liho on his belly watching television when she got home. “There you are,” he said.

She scooped up a cat toy from the floor and threw it at him, so that it bonked the cat on the head and the cat scrambled to catch it, digging in her claws. James yowled in protest, laughing, and scrambled to keep from getting savaged. “You’re an asshole,” she said, after he dumped the cat off himself and Liho went tearing off with the stuffed mousie.

“I almost got disembowelled again,” he said, smoothing his hand down the front of his shirt, which had some visible claw snags in it. “What’d I do to deserve that?”

“You know what you did,” she said.

He blinked at her, his expression shading from faux-wounded amusement to real surprise. “I do?”

“The CIA, James,” she said, hands on hips. She’d started off kidding, but this was upsetting to her. It was okay, it was okay, the only people who knew were people she could trust, but trust was expensive and she hadn’t planned on investing so heavily in it. “The CIA were the ones operating that surveillance camera in the garage. The one you looked straight into before throwing me into the back seat of that car.”

He blinked, blinked again, and then deflated. “Oh,” he said. “Right. Yes. There was a camera.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you _disable it_ ,” she said, “or _tell me_ , or _move us_ , or _something_?”

He blinked again. “It wasn’t a threat,” he said. “I could tell there was no microphone, and I could see it didn’t have a direct line of sight on us. It was a pretty low-fi rig. I figured disabling it would give too much away.”

“How could you see it?” she asked, anger leaving her suddenly; he wasn’t trying to lie, wasn’t denying it, wasn’t trying to get away with it, and now she really was just curious.

He shrugged, eyes going indirect. “There’s,” he said. “They-- resonate, kinda.”

Sometimes when she was sweeping a room she got false positives near James. She’d scanned him for trackers, and come up empty, but he had-- something. She knew he had something, but he usually brushed her off and waved her away and she hadn’t pushed it. “Sensors?” she asked.

He glanced over at her, looking a little nervous or unsettled. “Yeah,” he said. “I. Uh.” He gestured vaguely at his face. He’d gone a little pale.

She sat down next to him on the couch. “Let me guess,” she said. “In your teeth? Or in your skull?”

He swallowed hard, tried to speak, and failed, closing his mouth tightly and looking away. “I,” he said, “kh--”, a sharp sound in his throat, maybe the hard C of _can’t_ , she guessed. He breathed for a moment, chewing his lips.

He’d been conditioned against talking about them. She put her hand on his shoulder and tugged him close, sliding her arm around his shoulders. “It’s okay,” she said, “don’t try to talk.”

He opened and closed his mouth, still facing away, and swallowed hard. He’d gone really pale, now.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She should have known better. He would have told her, if he could.

“Hmmng,” he said, a noise of moderate distress, and she let him go, sliding her hand down his back. He twitched, unhappy with being touched, clearly uncomfortable all over.

“Shit,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.” She got off the couch, giving him his space.

He’d clearly made and eaten dinner, some hours before, while she was out; she had a moment’s guilty pang hoping he hadn’t waited for her. But he hadn’t texted her, which she knew he’d do if he was really wondering where she was. She put the leftovers away, and put the dishes in the sink, and when she came back he’d made himself a little blanket fort between the couch and the armchair, and Liho was purring inside it.

She folded back an edge of blanket and peered in. “Need anything in there?” It was a positive change; in the past when he’d been this uncomfortable he’d left her apartment, or hidden in the closet or the bathroom.

He gave her a wan smile, and shook his head. She scoped it out, calculating; there was room for her too if she nudged Liho over. So she went and retrieved her laptop, and crawled in, giving him a chance to object. He picked up Liho to make room, and moved over.

“Want to see our sextape?” she asked. “A friend intercepted it at the CIA and kept it from getting spread around. I don’t think anyone even ID’d you from it.”

He gave her a look, then smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.” His mouth wasn’t moving well, but it was moving, and that was rapid improvement.

“It’s a lot more boring than what actually happened,” she said. He smiled as he watched it, and some of his pale grimness went away. She interjected occasionally, pointing to her own flailing limbs and describing her orgasms. “This one, I thought my heart was going to stop.”

“Thought you might break my fingers,” he said, mumbling a little, but he sounded amused now, less sick.

“My CIA contact had trouble believing that you didn’t want me to reciprocate at the end,” Natasha said. Onscreen, James stood up and adjusted himself.

“Heh,” James said, “I wouldn’t ‘a needed much. But you weren’t in a state to do much, either. Figured I’d rather wait.”

“I’m still glad this isn’t on the Internet,” she said, watching him watch her expression. He was inscrutable, but she knew he was noticing the way she was looking at him on-screen, noticing her body language and all the stuff Sharon had immediately parsed.

(Maybe Sharon wasn’t such a bad match for Steve. Maybe Natasha needed to tell Steve about this to help him trust Sharon. She pondered that, too.)

James laughed a little, a cautious real smile. As the video ended, he looked over at her. “So who-all saw this?”

“The girls,” Natasha said. She let herself look a little bashful. “The price of their silence was that I tell them all about our sex life. So, uh. This video won’t get out, but now pretty much every woman who works for SHIELD knows you’re a god in the sack, Barnes.”

James laughed again, startled into a bigger laugh. “What did you tell them?”

“I told them the truth, James,” Natasha said. “I figured spilling some of your secrets was fair revenge for you knowing there was a fucking camera there!”

“I should’ve told you about the camera,” James said. “You’re right, I should have. I just-- I dismissed it as no threat and didn’t think about what it could do anyway.”

She leaned in, and he turned his head so she could kiss him. As she deepened the kiss she probed a little at his teeth with her tongue. They were too perfect, too regular, and not quite the right material. But asking him to let her scan them would probably set him off again, worse this time.

“Well,” Natasha said, “all it cost you was some cat scratches and--” She paused to gasp a little as he worked his hand up under her shirt, and hauled her into his lap deftly without wrecking the blanket fort. “And every woman at SHIELD being jealous of me.”

“I ain’t all that,” James drawled lazily, getting her bra undone easily and pushing it up to knead at her breast the way she liked. “C”mon, anybody could do what I do.”

“They don’t, though,” Natasha said. “Guys nowadays all expect you to blow them on the second date, and if they got a big dick they figure that’s their entire contribution.”

“Ha,” James said. “You got a big dick, that means you oughtta make her come twice before you even _think_ about puttin’ it in.”

“You should start a sex advice column,” Natasha said a little breathlessly.

“Mm,” he said, as she got her hands up under his shirt and kissed his cat scratches apologetically. (Liho had actually drawn blood, that damn cat.) He opened her jeans and slid his hands down in to grab her ass and pull her back up onto his lap. “Next Q&A session on the official blog is all relationship questions.”

“People send you those?” Natasha asked, laughing.

“You would not _believe_ ,” he said, “what people send me.” He bit her collarbone, got her shirt off, she got his shirt off, this was a lot nicer than anything they’d done in any of his blanket forts before, and he had his hand down her pants and inside her underwear and she was grinding down on him out of breath before she’d really thought it through. Sex with him was so instinctive, like she never needed to worry about choreography; their limbs just knew what to do.

As she shuddered over into her first orgasm, it suddenly struck her with tremendous clarity who might be able to figure out what kind of cyborg enhancements James had, if he couldn’t talk about them and couldn’t submit tamely to scans for them.

 

_______________________

 

“These work great,” Sam said. “I mean, you’ve really outdone yourself, Stark. I can’t even-- these are such an improvement.”

“I told you,” Tony said, unconcerned. He clapped Sam on the shoulder, and they walked back across the practice field, discussing specifications and turning radii and things.

It wasn’t until Sam was taking the wing pack off that Tony said, way too casual, “So maybe you could put in a good word with Rogers for me, he’s been pretty pissed at me lately.”

Sam regarded Stark calmly for a moment. Here it comes. “Well,” Sam said, “you have a bounty on his best friend’s head, and I’m aware of who his best friend is and what he’s done in the past, but we were handling it, Stark.”

Tony cocked an eyebrow. “You were looking for him and then suddenly stopped,” he said.

“We turned the op over to Natasha,” Sam said. “Putting the Black Widow on his tail is hardly stopping.”

“Mm,” Tony said.

“And Fury,” Sam added. “Romanoff and Fury are in charge of dealing with him. If you think that’s not enough, you should probably take it up with them.”

“Because Fury has such a great track record at dealing with HYDRA infiltration in his organizations,” Tony said, “up to and including the part where he was participating in the launch of helicarriers with pre-emptive kill orders and, you know, octopuses emblazoned on the sides.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, “he doesn’t work for SHIELD now. I think he’s got Natasha directly handling it, and if anyone’s equipped for it--”

“Do you have any idea how much HYDRA has been offering for him?” Tony asked. “I just matched them.”

Sam breathed in deeply, breathed out slowly. “And started a bidding war with them,” Sam said, “to the point now that the price on the Soldier’s head is more than the GDP of like, a medium-sized nation. People who were not remotely interested in him before are out for him now.”

“Well,” Tony said, “I really don’t feel it’s appropriate for him to be out in the wind anyway.”

“You should probably, as I said, talk to Fury about this?” Sam said. “But in the meantime, while you’re making the world even scarier, again, Steve is probably not going to want to be your pal.”

“Someone is going to get the Winter Soldier,” Tony said. “And when that happens, I want him to come to me. I don’t want HYDRA to get him, not even in pieces.”

“You gonna disassemble him in your basement?” Sam asked.

“If I have to,” Tony said. “But Jesus. You think Steve wouldn’t be the first person I called? Any part of him I find that’s still Bucky Barnes, Steve gets to keep.”

“He’s not spare parts, Tony,” Sam said.

“You’ve met him,” Tony said.

Sam considered his answer for a long moment. ‘Yes,” he said finally. “I have. What’s more I’ve watched most of his video blogs and I use them in my group sessions because he’s an incredible example of a very badly traumatized person doing an amazing job at piecing a human existence back together afterward.” He gave Tony a sharp look. “Even if I weren’t Steve’s friend I wouldn’t want to let you take that guy apart.”

Tony gave Sam a funny little half-smile. “It’s not that I have no sympathy for him,” he said, “but he’s not just a person.”

“I’m aware,” Sam said.

“He’s not even really technically human anymore,” Tony said. “And I know we’ve got our work cut out for us even defining what that means-- Steve’s not technically human either, he exceeds the parameters of most things you could plausibly use to define a human. Maximoff, she’s not human. Drew’s not human. Some days I think you and I are the only humans in this place. But that’s a debate for another time. My point with the Soldier is that he’s both genetically and cybernetically enhanced, and subject to outside control. He can’t be left out there in the wind struggling to rebuild himself a life when he’s literally designed to be emptied out and used by anyone with the right control words.”

“He’s not in the wind,” Sam said.

“His entire personality can be erased with four syllables,” Tony said. “And maybe he can grow it back and that’s great for him. It is. I’ll get some pom-poms. I’ll buy him a fucking medal. That’s great. But in the interim between the erasing and the growing back? He will do whatever he is told to do. And he is not just a person, he’s not a human, he’s a weapon. There’s no possible way to account for how much damage he could do.”

“Could he maybe detonate a city in the atmosphere,” Sam said, unimpressed, “or perhaps release hundreds of robots single-mindedly bent on exterminating humans, or maybe--”

“He’s _on that level_ ,” Tony said, exasperated. “Jesus, you say that like I don’t know. I _do_ , Sam. I _know_. You think I didn’t learn anything?”

“It’s never safe to assume that you have,” Sam said. “But I’m serious.”

“So am I,” Tony said. “He’s not human, he’s a weapon. And while I’m all about bodily autonomy and self-determination-- I _am_ , Wilson, Jesus fuck, I really am-- he’s an incredible risk, he’s _at_ risk. I wouldn’t kill him, Wilson. I just need him under control, under the control of someone I can trust, and that someone is absolutely not SHIELD. That really doesn’t leave anyone besides me, so yes-- _my_ control. And I badly, badly need for HYDRA not to get their hands on him again.”

Sam gave Tony as neutral a once-over as he could manage. “You need to talk to Fury about this,” he said. “Making it higher-stakes isn’t helping anybody.”

 

____________________

 

Natasha leaned in the door for several minutes, wondering if he’d acknowledge that surely he’d noticed her.

Was he a he? It was… a weird question.

She sometimes wondered about those sorts of things for herself. If they’d taken away so much of her humanity, did she truly have a gender? In her head, she really didn’t. Femaleness was something she put on as a disguise, or used to please a lover, or used to unsettle an opponent. It had never really been something she was. Even during sex-- during bad sex, sure, she was a woman, and that was an unpleasant thing. During good sex, though, she was just a body, and that was all that mattered. James was good at that, so good at that, so good at making her appreciate her nerve endings without worrying too much about what body parts they were actually in.

No, she had no particularly positive thoughts about her own femininity.

But sometimes she could feel neutral about it, could at least appreciate it as an abstract, aesthetic concern distanced from any purpose or utility. She hadn’t quite ever managed to just _be_ and _be a woman_ at the same time.

“You’re quite a good hacker,” Vision said finally, when she’d zoned out so thoroughly she’d given up on waiting for him.

“I can’t get over your voice,” she admitted, pushing away from the doorway. “I’m still working on it.” She came closer; he was sitting in the midst of an expanded hologram interface, and she could pick out some of it but only enough to realize that a great deal of it was in a spectrum she couldn’t see. And she had good eyes. “And what do you mean, I’m quite a good hacker, I’m the Black fuckin' Widow.” _Thanks, James, thanks for that turn of phrase, I didn’t mean to do that._

“Yes,” Vision said, “but being told something and seeing it for oneself are quite different.”

“Fair,” she conceded. She had to ask. “What pronouns do I use for you?”

He looked at her. “What do you mean?” he asked.

Fuck, that had been a robot thing to say, the way she’d said it, not a people thing to say, and he was a robot and might take offense. This was complicated. “Sorry,” she said. “I mean-- just, everyone always assumes male, and I am not trying to offend you, I just-- I like to be right.”

He smiled, beatific. “Male pronouns are fine,” he said. “I do consider myself male. It is an interesting question that few people think to ask. Thank you.”

She shrugged. “I’m just-- trying to be right,” she said. “I’m sorry if that was awkward.”

“Not at all,” he said kindly. “Not at all.”

She wandered into the middle of the hologram. “Why is so much of this infrared?”

The amused glitter of his eyes was very human. “I’m color-coding,” he said, “and I ran out of visible colors. How much infrared can you see?”

“I have standard human vision,” she said. “I just can tell there are things here.” She traced her finger along a block of code that was quite obviously there but invisible.

“How much of your intellect do you habitually conceal?” he asked, frowning a little.

“I don’t,” she said. “I just don’t bring it up. I don’t really have to lie very much, people assume all on their own.” She gave him a little smile, managing to keep it not very bitter at all.

He smiled back, and the invisible blocks of code shaded into view as red. He was sliding them back along the spectrum with his mind. Must be nice, to be so integrated into a computer and not have to waste quite so much time figuring out how to tell it what you wanted.

She recognized that he’d collated enormous numbers of social media and forum posts, and all the infrared-colored ones were by James. All the ones he’d made under many different handles, most of which were not his own, but she’d known about them. Which meant she knew how much competent detective work Vision had had to employ to find them too. “Are you hunting the Winter Soldier?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t say hunting,” Vision answered. He gestured, magnifying a block of text that Natasha recognized from James’s official blog. “But I am piecing information together. You are protecting him, yes?”

Natasha gave him a considering look, and watched the strange intricate machinery in his irises move as he considered her in return. “As much as he will allow me to, yes.”

“You knew him,” Vision said.

She shrugged. “The memories are scrambled,” she said matter-of-factly. “Some of them may belong to another person.”

He frowned. “As in, they put another person’s memories into you?”

“Yes,” she said.

“This can be done?” He looked slightly horrified. “With humans? This can-- this is possible?”

“No,” she said. “Not really. It’s not very good.”

“I wouldn’t imagine so,” he said. “That’s awful.”

She shrugged. “They were awful people but most of them are dead,” she said. “I think poor James had it worse, they overwrote another woman in his memory with me.” She’d never really talked about this, except with James, and it was really strange to do so now. But that was how this worked, with humans; you give away something, and get something in return. She wanted information from him, and the way to get that was to give.

Vision’s gaze went indirect, and she could tell he was looking into whatever information was available about memory manipulation.

“Disturbing,” he said, giving her a keen look. That was the thing that was unexpected: his eyes were inhuman but kind. Mostly one thought of robots as being cold, unconcerned. But Vision was kind. Kind of a fitting counterpoint, she supposed, to Ultron, who had been also the opposite of cold.

Something about Tony’s genius-- he made _truly weird_ AIs.

“I would like to meet-- James,” Vision said. “I feel he and I may have some unexpected things in common.”

Natasha gave him a wry smile. “I doubt he’d agree to it,” she said. That would be perfect.

“He may not wind up with a choice,” Vision said. He gestured. “I think he’s preparing for it, you know. He’s quite a skilled hacker, I hadn’t expected it, but I suppose, given what he is…”

“What do you mean?” Natasha asked, pretending confusion, but inwardly satisfied. If he knew already… but he might be trying to draw her out.

“He’s being hunted on every front,” Vision said. “He knows the world is only so big. But look-- he’s got a network of failsafes.” Lines of text lit up blue, all across the display. “So many aliases, I know this isn’t even all of them. He has a dead-man’s switch attached to all these accounts, I’d bet you. If he’s captured, all of these go live.”

“All of what,” Natasha said, suddenly cold. She drew closer to the display, staring at the little blue lines. She hadn’t known about this.

“Mostly,” Vision said, “they seem to be data drops. Some of this is conjecture, I’m just going through his encrypted communications. I’m just saying, Ms. Romanoff, that he is making some very canny arrangements for what he seems to view as his inevitable capture.”

“He told Nick that he thinks Tony Stark is his only real enemy,” she said. “And I don’t understand that.” The inhumanly-kind eyes, she thought, made it hard to tell whether he thought she was being honest. It made it a challenge. “He thinks Tony will take him apart. But I don’t know why he thinks that.”

Vision gazed at her, considering. “Well,” he said after a moment, in that mild and sensible tone he was so good at, “he _is_ a cyborg, and that is something Tony Stark is specifically very interested in.”

“He’s... a man with a metal arm,” Natasha said slowly, as if she really thought that was it. Did he know? Or was he bluffing?

Vision raised his eyebrows, which was possibly the closest she’d ever seen to surprise on him. “The metal arm is certainly an interesting part of him,” he said, “but what’s truly interesting about it is that it’s wired into his brain, you know? That’s not-- exactly usual. And the other augmentations he has that are less visible are no less revolutionary. Someone very smart, very advanced, did a lot of work on him, that has never been duplicated elsewhere.”

Natasha stared at Vision. He knew, then. And he would tell her. Fantastic. “Where have you gotten so much information about other augmentations?” she asked. “Because he himself doesn’t know much about them.”

Vision spread his hands in a self-deprecating gesture. “There isn’t much information,” he said. “I mostly have readings, and cobbled-together scraps. There’s a comprehensive file on him somewhere, there has to be. I’ve only found technicians’ notes, the same files you have. But surely you’re aware of some of them, you’ve been able to observe him closely.”

Natasha considered that. “I am aware he’s not precisely human,” she conceded. He wasn’t buying her feigned ignorance, but she couldn’t just-- drop it, couldn’t ask him straight out. Tony would find out. _Please_ , she thought, _tell me more_.

“The sensor arrays alone set him apart,” Vision said, “more surely than the metal arm. I recognize some of that technology just by its resonance, Ms. Romanoff: it’s Asgardian. He’s full of tech that shouldn’t be on this planet. And he is not entirely unaware of that.”

“No,” she said slowly, thinking it over. “He’s not.” She glanced up at Vision. “He’s… I think he’s had behavioral conditioning, so he can’t talk about it. I had a suspicion… and I asked him and he tried to say something, and then couldn’t speak at all. He can’t tell you anything. So I don’t know what he knows.”

“Oh dear,” Vision said. “Well, I might not need him to speak at all.” He considered it further. “Can he submit to an inspection, or has he been conditioned to avoid that as well?”

“It’s hard to tell,” Natasha said.

“I could scan him covertly, so that he would not have to know,” Vision said thoughtfully. “But I wouldn’t-- I don’t want to do anything he wouldn’t consent to. It’s hard to get consent for something he can’t talk about. Maybe if I spoke to him at some length I could draw him out and get to know his mind on this.”

“That could work,” Natasha said, inwardly relieved, but outwardly hesitant. She bit her lip, then suddenly straightened. “Don’t think you’re inducing me to turn him in. Don’t think I have that level of control over him.”

“I am aware that you don’t,” Vision said. “But I should address an earlier misconception: I want to meet him, but that does not mean I want Tony Stark to take him apart.”

Could she believe him? He hadn’t shown himself so far to be Tony’s creature; he’d displayed remarkable independence. But. “I still don’t think I can set you up a meeting,” she said. Better to emote wariness than to seem eager.

Vision smiled, in his bizarrely sweet way. “I wouldn’t need you to,” he said.

She blinked, nonplussed. Well, that was ominous as fuck.

 

___________________________________

 

“So,” Wanda said, and she’d done the thing where she curled a little bit of red through the corner of Steve’s vision as he came in, so he didn’t startle when she spoke. “Steven. We meet again.”

“Yeah,” Steve said as he went straight to the fridge, shaky and on-edge and gutted. It had been a bad, bad nightmare. He’d taken his drenched shirt off and not put another one on and he really should have, he was wearing only gym shorts, but it was the middle of the goddamn night.

“Bad one,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.

“Real bad,” he said, and closed the fridge door and sat down at the table with the carton of milk, and drank straight from it. He was going to finish it anyway. It didn’t matter. There was another behind it. He kept it stocked.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” she said.

“Didn’t wake you, did I?” he asked. She couldn’t have gotten down here by now if he had, surely? But she was fast if she wanted to be.

“No,” she answered, and he noted that her eyes were red-rimmed, a little guiltily. No, of course, she had her own demons.

“Guess I’m sorry for it anyway,” he said. “I know it’s noisy.”

“Mm,” she said. “It’s all right, Steven, don’t be sorry.” She was drinking tea, a giant cup of herbal tea. It smelled good, but he needed fat and calories and protein and sugar.

The nightmares were changing. They weren’t all his old ones, from WWII— the concentration camp, the first man he’d seen die, the first guy he’d killed, the usual suspects— or the endless loop of Bucky screaming and falling. This one had been with the STRIKE team, a mashup of half a dozen of Fury’s cleanup missions, with Brock fuckin’ Rumlow’s sneering face, and various people he’d known all disfigured with terrible wounds, collateral damage, kids with holes in their faces, peeling the mask off a dead enemy and finding Bucky bloody-mouthed and eyes rolled back in death—

“Oh,” Wanda said, “I have gossip to cheer you.”

“Yeah?” Steve said, surfacing from his loop. Oh, unpleasant; he drank more of the milk.

“So we had a girls talking thing yesterday,” Wanda said, “in the evening, with Natasha and Sharon and Bobbi and Jess, and they decided it was time to interrogate Natasha about her boyfriend, yes?”

Boyfriend. Yeah, that was probably what Bucky was to her. Huh. It was kind of funny to think of it that way. Steve smiled, a little. “What did Natasha think about that? She’s generally not fond of being interrogated.”

“I think she decided to play along,” Wanda said. “She seemed in a good mood. I think the others would not have included me but she made a point of it.” Wanda fidgeted.

“She likes you,” Steve said. “The others don’t really know you.”

Wanda smiled, a tiny smile. “Perhaps,” she said. “I am not— the others all seemed to know how such conversations should go, but I am not accustomed to such society, I was not certain how to behave. But Natasha was kind to me.”

“She is a kind person,” Steve said. “She doesn’t always have the luxury of it, but she is kind.”

“Well,” Wanda said. “Bobbi and Jessica were very keen on interrogating her about her sex life, and she obliged with some very, very amusing observations. Apparently your Bucky— or, James, as she called him, not because he cares for the name particularly but because she feels it’s not a suitable nickname for a grown man—“ and Steve interrupted her by laughing so long and loud he had to wave her on before she continued— “anyway, apparently he’s a very gifted and generous lover.”

“I’m sure,” Steve said, caught a little off-guard by it, and he was struck overwhelmingly with how Bucky had smelled, and the taste of his mouth, and it shot straight to his gut and stuck there.

“I just thought you should know,” Wanda said, “because undoubtedly by now the tale of it has been spread throughout the women’s locker room and beyond, and has entered into lore: the Winter Soldier has a great mouth, good hands, and a fixation on wringing orgasms out of partners.”

Steve swallowed hard. “These are all true things,” he said. Shit shit shit, he was only wearing tiny shorts. He breathed deep and focused on not embarrassing himself.

She grinned delightedly. “Are they? I had thought— but you know, you’ve never really said, and I am being not-nosy, you know?”

Steve sighed, and then laughed, shaking his head. “Yeah,” he said. “We messed around— we were kids, it wasn’t like— well, I don’t know what it was like really. I never had any other friends like that. He— sometimes I felt like he thought I was like, the stars in the sky, and sometimes I felt like he was embarrassed about me. But you know— we had some really good times, and mostly it wasn’t anything we worried about meanings with. It was just what we did, and it was—“ He gestured, and after a moment tried to take a breath because his chest had gone tight.

“Oh,” Wanda said softly, distressed. “Oh, I was trying to make it better, Steve.”

“It is better,” he said. It was all clenched up in his guts, everything he felt and worried about and— “It’s just-- sometimes too much to think about. He’s so _good_ , Wanda, he’s— you haven’t really met him, in person, you don’t know; he just _radiates_ , he’s so himself. And he still is, after everything. And I love him and I love Natasha and I’m glad they can— be there for each other.”

“Sharon was upset when Natasha said she’d never actually had a boyfriend before,” Wanda said. “Since she’d had— all kinds of other relationships, but never anyone she was with just because she wanted to be, who she could— feel that way about, I suppose— she didn’t explain in much depth.”

Steve had never really considered it. Natasha always seemed so self-reliant, so satisfied with her own control. “Really,” he said. “Well. I don’t suppose many people could keep up.”

“I have never had— a boyfriend either,” Wanda said, awkwardly.

Steve looked down at his hands. “Me neither,” he said. “I mean. Girlfriend either.”

Wanda seemed surprised. “Peggy Carter,” she said.

Steve glanced over and smiled at her. “We kissed once,” he said. “And then I died.” He shrugged. “I’ve— dated. I’ve— whatever Bucky and I had. Don’t get me wrong. But I think, as a group, we are people who are very likely to never have had normal relationships.” He shrugged.

“That does not mean we can’t,” she said, a little fiercely.

“Of course it doesn’t,” Steve said. He collected himself, and reached over and took her hand. “Well, normal is putting it… inaccurately. There’s no such thing as _normal_. Just… we can certainly hope for _good_.”

Her hands were cold and small, and she wrapped her other hand over his. “Good,” she said. “I would like that.” She looked a little bleak. “Someday.”

  


______________________

 

“Okay,” Sam said, as he walked his cooldown, and Steve walked next to him being obnoxiously un-tired, “okay, so.”

“You want to keep goin’?” Steve asked, bouncing.

“Fuck you man,” Sam said, with no real rancor. “Fuck that. No. I got a serious question though.”

Sam did look serious. Steve quit it with the bouncing, and walked next to him. “Okay,” he said. “What?”

“So. I talked to Stark. He fixed my wings.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. He’d known that. New paint job, real nice.

“He asked me to put in a good word for him with you, because you been mad at him,” Sam said. “So I was like, listen dude, you don’t know what you done wrong? Like, you don’t think personally puttin’ out a bounty on the Winter Soldier is kind of harsh when it’s a situation we’re handling, right?”

“Well said,” Steve pointed out.

“So Stark is like, well yeah, okay, and here’s his rationale. Hear it out,” Sam said, “I’m not sayin’ I agree. But here’s the thing. He just wants there to be an incentive, because he thinks it’s inevitable that someone’s gonna take Bucky down sooner or later.”

“Well,” Steve said, nettled, “no fuckin’ shit, because the bounty is like a quadrillion dollars.”

“Right,” Sam said, “and I did point that out, and Tony sort of shrugged. He said the thing is, someone’s gonna get Bucky, and when that happens, he wants the pieces brought to him, not disappeared back into HYDRA. Because whatever else, he’s not gonna just wipe him and send him back out.”

“I should fuckin’ hope not,” Steve said. Oh Tony. “What a fucker.” It wasn’t said fondly. He liked Tony, or more, he liked the idea of Tony, and he liked that Tony existed, and he liked… well, the guy wasn’t bad, he was just fucking exhausting. And okay he kind of wanted to bang him but he was never ever ever going to admit that to anyone.

“He generously offered to give whatever pieces were still Bucky back to you,” Sam said. “And I don’t think he was trying to be a dick about it, but-- anyway.” Sam shook his head. “His motivation is to keep Bucky out of HYDRA’s hands, which is noble enough. But he also believes that Bucky’s dangerous on his own, because, and let me try to remember exactly what he said, because I didn’t know what he meant but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking.”

“Of course Bucky’s dangerous,” Steve said, frowning. “So am I. So is Tony! Jesus.”

“I did point that out,” Sam said. “I asked if Bucky was likely to annihilate any cities or unleash any armies of murder-bots and Tony got kinda pissed.”

“Good,” Steve said. Sam offered a fist-bump, and Steve pounded it. Keeping Tony Humble was an important job.

“He said,” Sam said. “Hm. Okay. He said, he’s _subject to outside control_. He said it like that. Said something about control words, and finished up with making the point that his personality could be totally erased by, I think he said, four syllables? Do you have any fuckin' idea what he’s talking about?”

Steve made a face, rubbed his hand along the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he said, “there was stuff about that in the files.”

“I never saw anything about any control words,” Sam said.

“Not the-- not that first file,” Steve said. He rubbed his hands along his arms. “One of the other file caches that came up later. They did a lot of-- they did a lot of conditioning, on him.” He had to look at the ground, picking his words carefully and trying to get them out without tearing himself up. “So they put in these words, like, triggers. And they could shut him down, or render him helpless, or knock him out, or make him docile. There were a handful of them, and-- use makes them lose efficacy, but some of them were more secret than others.”

“So this is true, then,” Sam said. “Someone could find out the right words and make him forget everything again.”

Steve waggled his head from side to side, grimacing. “Not… exactly?” he said. “But-- I mean, yeah.”

“So,” Sam said, “so Tony’s not wrong?”

“Don’t ever let anyone hear you say that,” Steve said. “No, Tony’s not right, he’s just-- not getting that from _no_ where.”

“How big of a danger is this?” Sam asked. “I mean-- Tony was trying to come off, a little, like he wanted Bucky brought in for his own protection, and I figured he was full of shit.”

“Of course he’s in danger,” Steve said. “So am I! So are you! That’s how life works. He’s in a lot more danger in captivity, where he can’t get away from someone who’s hurting him.”

“Yeah but,” Sam said. “Words. Control words. I didn’t know that was a thing that could exist and I’m fuckin’ terrified now that I do.”

“Natasha knows about them,” Steve said. “If she thought it was too much of a risk she’d do something about it. But she has them too, she said. It’s-- they’re a thing. It’s hard to use them properly and few people would be able to find out how.”

“But someone could,” Sam said, stopping, and Steve had to stop and turn back to face him.

He didn’t really have an answer for that. Not a snappy one. Not a good one. “Maybe?” Steve said. “There’s a chance. There’s a chance HYDRA will outbid Tony at the last second, too. Or that someone’s gonna grab him who doesn’t want the money. There’s all kinds of things that could happen, Sam. What do you want me to do? Should I try to make him come in, on my say-so, just in case? Where can I keep him? Can we keep him safe?”

“I don’t know any of that,” Sam said. “I don’t know what to do either. But maybe you and Tony gotta talk this over.”

“No,” Steve said. “Me and Bucky have got to talk this over.”

Sam started walking again, hands on hips. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s probably more like it.”

  


_________________

  


The video was titled “Oldest Living Bucky Barnes Relative Tells All” but it was only a couple of minutes long. Curious, Natasha clicked on it. It was an old man, sitting on a chair in some kind of hospital-looking setting. He was quite old, his skin gone transparent after the manner of very old white people, his hair just white wisps across his skull, and his eyes were a faded rheumy blue.

“Bucky Barnes was my cousin,” the old man said, his voice clear and strong, only a little wheezy with age. “I was about ten when he joined the Army. He used to babysit for me all the time. Us kids, we thought he hung the moon-- he was really our father’s cousin, he and his sisters was the youngest of that generation.” He looked a little misty, nostalgic. “He was a great guy, a hard worker, always had time to talk to us little kids-- he’d dance with us, he’d play games, he’d pick us up and throw us and catch us and all that. He was just the most fun grown-up we knew. We all loved him like crazy.” He paused, a little choked-up. “It was real hard when he went away. And we-- when we heard he was dead, we--” He stopped, and wiped his eyes. “We were real upset. It was-- it was real hard.”

There was a cut, and then the camera came back to him still sitting in the same spot. “But this Winter Soldier guy!” he said, looking angry now. “This is some bullshit! People say that’s really Bucky Barnes-- I say hell with that! To hell with that! There’s no way that’s him. There’s no way that’s my cousin. Maybe I was only a kid but I knew him.” He was actually quivering with anger, and his face was flushed. “Bucky Barnes was a good man. And he wasn’t afraid to do difficult things, I may have been a kid but I did understand that. It’s not that he wasn’t-- not that he wasn’t capable of -- he was in the Army, he did hard things for them, I know that. I was a kid, I wasn’t stupid.” He paused, drew breath. “But he wasn’t this. He wasn’t a-- a cold killer. He wasn’t a mass-murderer! And that’s just plain _not him_.”

The video ended, and she looked up from her phone and James was standing in the doorway. He was so goddamn quiet for a man his size. She’d thought he was asleep. “Was he really your cousin?” she asked, since it was futile to pretend that wasn’t what she’d been watching. His hearing was good enough there was no way he hadn’t caught it.

“Johnny Murphy,” James said, and his expression was totally blank. “My uncle Jack’s son. Used to watch him and his older brothers during family stuff sometimes. He’s the oldest one left alive, I looked him up already.”

Natasha nodded, looking back down. The old man didn’t look anything like James, except that they were both white and had blue eyes. Though-- maybe. The mouth, a little bit. Could be. She glanced up. “How much do you figure he really remembers?”

“Oh,” James said, “enough.” He was utterly blank. “He’s right, you know.”

He turned and vanished into the bedroom, and in a moment came back out. Natasha shot to her feet in time to block him from going into the kitchen. He was dressed to go out, he was going to leave. “Wait,” she said. “He’s right about what?”

James gave her an impassive once-over, and without him saying or even really emoting anything, she knew he’d already calculated how much force it would take to go straight through her. “Bucky Barnes died,” he said. “I might have his face, but I’m not him. He would never have become this, and he didn’t.”

Natasha steeled herself. “That could be true,” she said. “That could be the story you tell yourself and what you believe. And if you want that, that’s true enough. But it doesn’t mean you’re less, James.”

“I’m not James,” he said. “I’m not Bucky, I’m not James-- I’m not a person, and I only bother pretending to be one because it makes people feel better. It’s stupid and a waste of time.”

“You’re a person,” Natasha said, settling her weight on the balls of her feet. He didn’t miss the implication; she’d be harder for him to go straight through.

She’d never pushed him on this, had never tried to keep him nearby, and she watched his flat eyes as he assessed this unusual level of resistance. “I know you like it better when I pretend to be a person for you but that’s sentimental nonsense and you’re better than that.”

“You’re _a person_ ,” she said, and her adrenaline was kicking up. She was ready to fight him on this.

“I’m not human,” he said.

“You’re a person,” she said again, lowering her head slightly, tucking her chin in, rolling her shoulders up. She wasn’t bothering to conceal her posture. It was a defensive posture, preparing to take a blow and return it, as well as being stubborn body language.

“It’s not real,” he said. “When I do all that person shit, it’s not real, Natalia, you should know that better than anyone.” He shook his head. “Don’t tell me you’re fooled by it.”

“Nobody’s real,” she said. “Nobody’s genuine. Everyone fools themselves and people around them all the time. You’re no different.”

“Why is this upsetting you?” he asked, still horribly flat, still blank; this was what they’d conditioned into him, this was how he had survived them. This was why so many of his later handlers had assumed he was really a robot.

“Because you’re my friend,” she said, “and I care about you, and you’re not being fair to you.”

“You don’t usually care when I go away,” he said. “Why care now? Are you angry because I’m not pretending for you like I usually do?”

“You’re not that good at acting,” she said. “I know when you’re pretending.”

“Am I pretending now?” he asked, flat and disinterested.

“You don’t think you are,” she said. “You think you’re being honest, but you’re lying to yourself and part of you knows it.”

“I’m not lying to myself,” he said, with a flicker of emotion-- amusement, but it was still emotion.

“If you weren’t upset about this,” she said, “you would still be in bed taking a nap. If you were not a person and didn’t have feelings this wouldn’t upset you at all. But you’re upset. And I don’t want you to go and be alone when you’re upset like this.”

“Why not,” he said, which was a near-defeat kind of argument.

“Because,” she said, “you’re my friend, and regardless of what you are, I care about how you feel.” He drew breath to argue, and she held up her hand, palm-outward. “Even if you think you’re only good to me as a weapon, you have to understand that I’d want you to be operational, and I know you don’t take care of yourself on your own as well as you do when you’re pretending to be a person for me. So I don’t want you to leave here when you’re upset like this.”

“You’re not my handler,” he said.

“I’m not,” she said. “I’m your friend, and beyond that, I rely on you, James.” She saw the flicker of protest in his face at the name, and also saw him realize that fussing over it only proved her point. He settled himself a little, shifting his weight-- standing down a little. “I rely on you, I want you operational, and I do think you’re a person, and I want you to be happy.” He looked sullen, and she summoned the last of her courage. “That’s what it’s like when you love people, James. You want them to be happy. And I know you know that.”

He chewed on his lower lip, looking sullenly downward-- no eye contact. “I’m not a person,” he said, quietly, defiant.

Natasha resettled her weight, tossing her hair back a little before tucking her chin again to keep her blockade in place. “You are a person, James. You know what I am. You know I can tell when people are lying. And I know, James, that you weren’t lying when you said you loved me.”

He actually flinched a little, at that. “I’m not allowed,” he muttered, “to have-- to do-- things like that.”

“But you do,” she said. “And it’s not a question of being allowed. If you weren’t a person it wouldn’t occur to you to do something like that.” He didn’t know what to say to that, but she could see his uncertainty. “I know you weren’t lying,” she said. “I know you aren’t lying. And I’m not a sentimental fool, James. I wouldn’t waste my time on loving you back if you weren’t capable of accepting it.”

He rocked back on his heels a little at that, eyebrows going up, his whole stance unsettled. He took in a breath, and said, “Natasha.”

“I _do_ , James Barnes,” she said, and it was surprisingly physically painful to say, something too tight in her chest and her blood pressure elevated, her heart rhythm a little wrong. “And it’s not because of whatever memories I may or may not have or anything that may have been between us in the past. It’s because I know _you_ , the person you are _now_ , the choices you make _now_ , the things you believe _now_ , the way you protect your friends and want to save the world and what you do, _now_. I-- I love you for that, because I have seen it, because I know it to be true. I don’t care what you think your name is or what you think you deserve. I don’t care what a confused old man wants to believe, James. I _know_ you.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, and tried his best to look at her, really tried to lift his eyes to hers. She saw him realize he couldn’t, saw him give up and close them for a moment instead, and watched the taut line of his shoulders sag a little bit. “I don’t,” he said, and she had to step in, then, had to touch him. She put her hand on his shoulder, and the other on his face, and he tilted his head down to rest it against hers, temple to temple but because of their heights, it was more his jaw against her ear, his head bowed down.

She put her arms around his waist, under his arms. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I’m not always a person either. But I’m enough of a person to know this.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lakeisha will be back in the next chapter, I promise!  
> The days are so short, I can literally feel huge parts of my brain shutting down, but the writing part still seems to work, and every time I get comments it's like little lights go off in my dark, foggy little brain, so it makes a huge difference and I love you all. Replying to them is also great but I remain not the best or most consistent at it.  
> ... Speaking of which is it bad etiquette to go back and revise author's notes on earlier chapters? Because dag yo, I whined a lot. LOL.


	13. That's All Right (Mama)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky finds stupid freemium phone app games in foreign languages soothing, and also finds it soothing to get Steve Rogers worked up over stuff, so he happily discovers a method to combine these things.  
> We get to meet Lakeisha's family.  
> Proverbial shit may or may not hit the proverbial fan.  
> Jimmy promises to help James work on his reading skills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got this all written and then caught a cold and I'm on so much cold medicine it's taken me like six days to do my final edits, and I'm not 100% sure I'm coherent, but I just wanted to get something done, so apologies if any bits of this are incoherent.  
> All information about [Neko Atsume](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_Atsume) courtesy of my dude, who is hilarious and never reads my stuff and never features in my stuff, but who has very patiently showed me a lot of cartoon cats over the last couple of weeks. (He's a little put out that they released it in English, actually, because he sort of thought the point was that you had no idea what was going on, but if you were wondering, that's why it's suddenly everywhere-- they translated it.)

Steve was sitting preoccupied on the steps down from the conference room, frowning deeply at his phone. Sam steeled himself, sighing inwardly. Great. More fuckin’ drama. 

Kinda looked like that sculpture. Rodin. Thinker. Yeah. 

_Fuck._

“What’s the haps, Cap,” Sam said, dropping down next to Steve on the step. 

Steve didn’t look at him, still frowning at his phone. “How’s your Japanese, Sam?” he asked finally. 

“Uh,” Sam said. Oh hell no. “Why, are we going to Japan?”

“No,” Steve said, but didn’t elaborate, still frowning at his phone. He poked intently at it. “Fuck,” he said, then poked something else. 

“Who do we know who’s in Japan?” Sam asked patiently.

“Nobody,” Steve said. He poked something. “Ah,” he said, satisfied, then poked again. Scrolling. “Shit.”

“You’re killin’ me,” Sam said. 

“I know,” Steve said. “This is frustrating. I can’t figure out what it says.”

“Run it through a translation app,” Sam said. 

Steve finally looked at him. “I gotta take a screenshot to do that,” he said. “I’m just tryin’ to figure out the navigation. It can’t be that hard.”

Sam blinked at him, and Steve blinked back. “What?” Sam said finally. 

Steve turned his phone. It was a-- it was like, a phone app game or something. In Japanese. “Bucky just sent this to me with like, no explanation.”

“It looks,” Sam said, highly aware that there was likely to be another shoe dropping any time now, “like a… game?”

“Oh,” Steve said, “yeah, it’s a game.”

“With… explosions?” Sam asked. 

“No,” Steve said. He poked at it. “Cats. Apparently.”

Sam leaned in. “And that’s…”

Steve shook his head a little. “I ran the text from the website through the translate thing on Google. It told me, hang on.” He switched screens out of the game app to his internet browser with a perfectly fluid competence at stark odds with the inept poking he’d been doing a moment before. “Ahem. 

_And aside the rice and goods_  
_A cat who have gathered in the garden_  
_It is healed by nothing but watching.  
__Basically, you are such application_.”

“Uh,” Sam said. 

“Yeah,” Steve said. 

“I figured you had that sour face on because you found out something else awful about Bucky,” Sam pointed out.

Steve blinked at him. “What?” He laughed. “No! I was just trying to figure out what the fuck Bucky thought was so great about this game.”

Sam sighed, and let himself collapse until his shoulder was pressed against Steve’s. “I really thought,” he said wearily, “that this was going to be another one of those awful data drops where we find out more fuckin’ details about the awful shit they did to your homeboy.”

“Oh,” Steve said, distressed. “Sorry. No. Jeez, Sam, no-- it’s just, it’s a cute phone game he says is really relaxing.”

“Fuck’s sake, man,” Sam said. “You’re sure there’s no nefarious backstory here? Like, you’re not gonna play it for fifteen minutes and then suddenly there’s a whole hidden menu screen that has like a buffet of illicit content that’s just all shitty HYDRA codewords or whatever.”

Steve stared at him. “Oh Sam,” he said. “Oh, Sam. I work you too hard.”

“I’d protest,” Sam said, “but I don’t think you’re wrong.” Steve looked miserable. Sam sighed, and leaned in and hugged him. “It’s okay, man,” he said. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Steve said, a little muffled. 

“Well,” Sam said. He pulled Steve’s head down a little more comfortably against his shoulder. He was going to make Captain America a snuggler if it killed him.

Because it damn well might kill him. 

“At least we have cute cartoon cats to look at in the meantime,” Steve said, angling his phone so he could see it without moving his head from Sam’s chest. “Look, you put out food and toys and they come to your yard. It’s really cute.”

“I do see the appeal,” Sam said. And it crossed his mind to wonder if anybody was teaching the Winter Soldier how to be a snuggler. 

 

______________

 

 

 

 

Natasha was poking absently at her laptop with James next to her on the couch when she got the email from Vision. It seemed oddly formal, to get an actual e-mail from an actual android; had he, himself a computer, sat down at another computer to compose it, or had he sent it with his mind? 

The subject line was “our mutual friend”, so she opened it without saying anything to James. It was a link to a new info drop online: some snoop had uncovered a bunch more documentation on the Winter Soldier in some godforsaken Russian backwater. 

_Tony hasn’t finished translating it yet_ , Vision wrote, _but what he’s understood so far has him panicking. Other documents have mentioned the existence of control words, but this one has an actual list and some of their effects._

Natasha suspended her breathing for a moment, before glancing over at James, who was giving his phone a deep look of concentration. He knew, then. He frowned, and scrolled sideways across the phone, and scowled deeper. 

She set her laptop aside, then reached over and put her hand around his wool-sock-clad foot, squeezing gently and reassuringly. “It’ll be okay,” she said. She was still working out how to explain Vision to him, how to maybe get them to meet up, and most importantly how to get him to consent to being scanned without setting off his conditioning.

He blinked at her, expression clearing. “Oh,” he said, “it’s fine. I was just thinking about something.”

Maybe he _didn’t_ know. She raised her eyebrows at him. “You looked upset,” she said. 

He laughed, and leaned in a little closer to her, re-settling so she could see his phone. “No,” he said. “I’m trying to get a good picture of a cartoon cat from a game to text it to Steve.”

His phone was open to a screen full of a cartoon landscape, maybe a backyard or something, littered with cartoon cats in varying states of repose. All the buttons were in-- Natasha squinted. Bubbly Japanese. It was very kawaii. “What is this,” she said. 

“Neko Atsume,” James said. “It’s appallingly popular among non-Japanese-speaking nerds who can’t read the buttons.”

“Can you read the buttons?” she asked. Her Asian languages were deficient. She could speak Japanese and understand it well enough for in-context functionality, but reading it was the sort of thing that made her miss the way the Red Room used to shove things into her head. Unfortunately, if they’d ever given her written Japanese, they’d taken it away again. Because while the Japanese had not one but two perfectly sensible and beautiful phonetic writing systems, they mostly used neither and instead wrote with Chinese characters which Natasha had spent a few long hours bashing her head against and could barely make out one in ten of. Key phrases she could get, but anything out of context left her baffled.

Like this.

He gave her an inscrutable look. “You can’t?” She shook her head. He frowned. “Why would they give it to me and not you?”

“They took things back out sometimes,” she said. “I think I was more of a flight risk.”

“Fair point,” he said, a little glum. Of course the Soldier hadn’t been much of a flight risk—not by stealth, anyway. And they’d never bothered doing any fine data removal, but just nuked his entire memory on the regular. It didn’t leave him with a lot of social facility but they never used him for that sort of thing. He would have been a fantastic covert agent, was the tragedy of it all, but they’d mostly only used him as a blunt instrument. Sometimes, an incredibly finely-applied and focused blunt instrument, but blunt instrument nonetheless.

It meant, though, that he remembered more things like that than she did. They’d removed small things from her, not big swathes, and it was harder to get those back because she didn’t know they were missing. With him, if he could get any of a memory, he could usually get enough of it for function; with her, there wasn’t enough of a gap for her to know to look, and if there was, what was gone had been more thoroughly erased.

“No, no,” she said, “tell me more about cute cartoon cats,” _because I am about to wreck your day_.

He grinned. “It’s a dumb game, you just put stuff out and then you check back and they’ve come by and are hanging out. It’s really relaxing, there’s not really any strategy. But I sent it to Steve and I’m trying to make him all competitive about it. Just to wind him up.”

“Maybe you really _are_ a supervillain,” Natasha said admiringly. Steve’s competitive streak was possibly his most entertaining feature, but it was hard to exploit. He had to be pretty comfortable with you to be unwary enough to let you wind him up. He’d basically never be at that point with Tony, which was too bad, because that would be some quality entertainment.

“Right?” James said. He scrolled sideways. “I’m Captain America’s fuckin’ nemesis. Somebody’s gotta be.” He laughed. “Anyway. So, you pick what objects, food or toys or beds or whatever, to put out into your yard, and it attracts cats, and that’s all there is to it, but if you use different objects you get, like, rare cats. It’s a whole-- thing. And I’ve been doing it a little bit so I already have a whole dossier of cats, and I’m going to mess with Steve about how many more I have and so on.” He showed her said dossier, and the cartoons were really cute. Apparently you could take the pictures, in-game, and save them in your book of cats who had visited you.

“If you don’t feed them do they die?” Natasha asked. 

James shook his head. “Nah,” he said, “they just don’t come by. They’re not, like, _your_ cats. It’s no big deal if you don’t check in for a while. You come back, you can just pick up where you left off. It’s not like the cats get mad or anything. You put out more food, they’ll come back.”

“I can see how that might be appealing,” Natasha said. 

“Yeah, it’s basically zero pressure,” James said. “But it’s still kind of rewarding.” He swiped through. “This one’s my favorite. The cheapest toy you can get with your credits is a stupid plastic bag, and this cat just, fuckin’, wears the bag on his head. Like an idiot. His name is something like Spot or Dash or something but I call him Baghead Idiot. Because he is.” He laughed, bringing up the photo. “Look at this fuckin’ idiot with a bag on his head. It’s fuckin’ great.”

“What an idiot,” Natasha agreed, amused. 

“He’s my fuckin’ favorite,” James said. “It’s so stupid. And look at how all their assholes are little x’s. Isn’t that fuckin’ adorable?”

“It is,” Natasha said. She leaned in against James’s warm body, and made herself comfortable. “But you have a real cat.”

“The real cat is more work,” he said. He exited the app, and put his phone down on the arm of the couch, and kissed the top of Natasha’s head. “You seemed like you were readin’ something a lot less entertaining.”

“I was,” she said. She sighed. She could feel his heartbeat through her shoulderblade, warm and steady.

“Don’t, then,” he said. “Stop thinkin’ about it for a minute, hey?”

“I can’t,” she said.

“It’s about me, ain’t it,” he said, low and soft. His heartbeat picked up, going a little faster. 

She twisted to look up at him. He _had_ known, then. “Yes,” she said.

He looked away. “I knew one was comin’,” he said. “Info dump, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Control triggers, in this one.”

“Fuck,” he said. He breathed in slow, and breathed out, and she could feel him slowing his heartbeat deliberately. “Each of ‘em only works once but-- each of ‘em works, y’know?”

“I have some too,” she said. “They’re buried, the ones that are left, and I may never find them all.”

He wrapped his arm around her chest-- the left one, solid and immovable and warm. “I tried to find out about mine,” he said. “But I-- it’s like my-- I’m not allowed to rr-- to read-” He stopped talking, and sighed. “Mm.”

“I can read it for you,” she said. She hadn’t thought of that. 

He put his cheek down against the side of her head. “Yeah?” His voice was very quiet, but he sounded almost hopeful.

She pointed at her laptop. “Hand that to me and I’ll read it and summarize.”

“I don’t know if I can even do a summary,” he said. 

“Tap out if it’s too much,” she said. 

He let go of her to reach her laptop for her, and she started scrolling. His heartbeat went erratic before steadying out, and he turned his head. “I can’t even look,” he said. 

“Close your eyes,” she said. “Put your hand around my wrist and squeeze if it’s too much.”

“If I have a seizure I’ll break your arm,” he said. “No.”

“Then I’ll check in with you,” she said. “I’ll ask if I should continue, and if you can’t verbally tell me yes, I’ll stop.”

“No,” he said, “no, I’ll—"

“Yes,” she said. “That’s what I want. I’m not going to keep going if you can’t tell me to.”

He regarded her for a moment, jaw set stubbornly, but she was letting her face make whatever face it was making, and it must have told him something. He let his breath out slowly, and said, “Okay.”

“Good,” she said, and turned back to the screen.

 “Okay,” he said. “Here goes nothin’, huh? Hit me.”

She rubbed her cheek against his chest, turning slightly so the screen was less in his line of sight. “I’m not hitting you,” she said, “I’m going to read it first, and tell you the most important things first.”

“Good call,” he said, and dug his phone back out to look at the cartoon cat game again. “Hey,” he said, “check it out, I got Samurai Cat! I gotta text that one to Steve.”

“Do that,” she said fondly, sparing him a smile before she went back to her grim reading.

 

_______

 

Across town, Steve swore suddenly. 

“What,” Wanda said, looking up from her magazine. 

“Bucky’s got a crazy samurai cat and all I’ve got is Fatass here who ate all my damn food,” he said. 

“What on earth are you talking about,” she asked, putting the magazine down. 

“Oh,” Steve said. “This game. You gotta get this stupid game.”

 

______

 

 

Natasha’s phone made a truly odd sound, and she waited for the next stoplight to pull it out and look at it. It was… not a text message, but it looked sort of like one, and-- was her phone hacked? What the fuck? 

It was from Vision. He didn’t have a phone because he didn’t really need one. It stood to reason he could just-- psychically contact her phone without an SMS plan. She supposed it answered her question as to whether he used a computer to send emails or just used the computer that he _was._

It said, _The Collective believes it has a positive lead on Barnes’s location._

The Collective was a group of hackers, related to Anonymous, overlapping with Anonymous, vaguely affiliated with the Rising Tide, and with a few major operatives certainly located in New York. Natasha had worked both with and against them, and of course, none of them had any idea of that. 

She also knew that James’s little video-editing friend, Lakeisha, had a history with them.

Lakeisha was good; it was hard to tie anything of her online presence with her physical self. It was only because Natasha knew her work from James’s videos that she had any idea of who the woman’s online persona was-- Witness was a notable hacker, but solitary, and most everyone assumed that Witness was a man. And it was only because Natasha had seen her in person that she’d picked out the woman’s face, much younger, much less guarded, innocent, in some of the personal photos of some of the other hackers associated with the Collective. 

Lakeisha had gone by a different handle then, had been a lot less cautious, a lot more free-spirited. And at some point she’d gone back and removed herself, and only a few orphaned threads here and there, stray posts and random shout-outs, remained to attest that there had once been a young black woman called Keesha93 involved with the Collective. 

All that served to tell Natasha that whoever the leak was, if this was a plausible claim, it wasn’t Lakeisha.

But it might be someone with a personal grudge against her. 

She used voice-to-text to reply. _I’d better come tell you what I know_. 

_Their lead is credible,_ Vision wrote back. _Drive safely. Is Barnes safe?_

She’d left him asleep in bed with Liho curled next to his face. He’d made it, white-faced but still verbal, through her brutally brief summary of the documentation, and when she’d told him there was a list of triggers, he’d argued with her until she’d agreed to read them to him to deactivate them. She’d refused to read any of the ones that were listed as having fatal effects, despite him arguing that those were the most necessary ones to expose him to in a controlled environment. But she’d read him one that was supposed to slow him down, and it had given him a horrifying seizure; she’d had him sitting down first, but he’d fallen off the couch and bled copiously from his nose, and hadn’t breathed for nearly two minutes. Once he was conscious, he’d spent an hour cajoling her into reading him another one, which was supposed to incapacitate him, and he’d passed out cold from that. She’d revived him eventually, and flat-out refused to tell him any more, and he’d been exhausted enough to give up and go to bed. She didn’t figure he’d be up anytime soon.

  _For now,_ she wrote back.

Vision sent her a photo, and she looked at it at the next stoplight. It was grainy, clearly taken with a cellphone camera from a distance, but it was unmistakably a photo of James, on the street, walking, hair pulled back and face curled in a smile; he was speaking, mid-story, animated. Next to him was a person, shorter, face clumsily blurred-out, curvy— Natasha recognized her then, recognized the girl. Walking next to him, clearly talking with him, her body turned in toward him. Lakeisha. 

The question now was, did the Collective find _her_ , and through her, James? Or did it go the other way? Either way, the girl could be in danger.

Well, what it meant now was that the Collective was in danger, because Natasha was not going to let this go.

 

________

 

“Damn,” Jeremy said as Lakeisha shuffled out into the hallway, eyes swollen nearly shut. “You look rough, girl.”

“Online drama,” she said. 

“Someone’s wrong on the Internet?” Jeremy said. 

_“Everyone_ is wrong on the Internet,” she said. She rubbed her face, and shuffled into the kitchen. “You make coffee yet?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “Mom and Jimmy already took off to go buy groceries..”

Lakeisha rubbed her face again. “I forgot they were goin’,” she said. She frowned. “They weren’t gonna go until later! I was gonna go with ‘em!” 

“I told them to go on early so I could talk to you,” Jeremy said. He sat at the kitchen table. “We gotta talk about the Internet.”

“Fuck,” Lakeisha said, since the coast was clear and she could swear. “I don’t know how the Collective found me! None of them knows I’m even active online anymore, let alone what handle I use or what circles I run in.”

“The Collective are a bunch of assholes,” Jeremy said. 

“I know,” Lakeisha said. “I just-- I don’t know who took that picture or where they found it or what they were even thinking.”

“What picture?” Jeremy asked. 

Lakeisha blinked at him, and paused to drink her first swallow of coffee, grimacing because it was a little too hot. “There’s a picture of me posted up in that thread,” she said. “All the shit with the Winter Soldier? That’s a photo of me, and they blurred my face out but that’s definitely a warning specifically to me.”

Jeremy frowned. “You know that?”

“What else could it be?” Lakeisha asked. “Why you think I been cryin’ my eyes out all night? I can’t find the leak, I have to nuke everything I got online. I know Mike stalked me for a real long time after everything went down, and it made me so careful,” damn it, she was crying again, “and I don’t know how he found me because I was so careful, I was _so_ careful, and now he’s taken it all away from me again.” She put her coffee down and covered her face with her hands and sobbed. 

“I thought that was supposed to be a warning to the Winter Soldier,” Jeremy said after a moment’s awkward silence while she tried to compose herself.

Lakeisha didn’t move her hands. “He’s a big boy,” she managed thickly. 

“Wait,” Jeremy said, “you _knew_ he was the Winter Soldier? You knew it the whole time?”

“James?” She peeled her hands down from her face. “Maybe? No, but I figured he was a guy with _some_ kinda deal, and I still don’t know for sure but I know I don’t care.”

“You don’t care,” Jeremy said, incredulous. 

“I don’t care!” she said. Which wasn’t _quite_ true, but it clearly wasn’t the main issue here.

“He’s a terrorist and an assassin and a mass-murderer and a psychopath and he knows where you work and knows where you live and you _don’t care_?” Jeremy demanded. 

“I don’t care,” she said again. “Jesus, Jeremy, I don’t care. He’s no danger to me, I never put myself in a position to pose a threat to him so he’s got no reason to turn on me. I been good to him.”

“What if he don’t have a choice?” Jeremy asked. “What if somebody makes him go nuts again?”

“Well,” Lakeisha said, “I _was_ perfectly safe because nobody knew who I was to make him go nuts against me, but now my picture’s on the Internet because someone knew who I was in meatspace, so now I don’t know, Jeremy, but it was perfectly safe because I was nobody!” She really wanted to throw shit and break it, but a bunch of their dishes and kitchen appliances were new because of the recent YouTube money, and she didn’t want to have to clean it up. “Fucking Mike, I fucking hate him and I wish I was a violent person and could kill him, because I would.”

“You were safe because you were nobody,” Jeremy said, like that was a crazy thing to say. 

“I was nobody!” she said. “There’d be no reason for anyone to try to turn the Winter Soldier against me because I was nobody! If they were gonna send him on a killing spree, it’d be against people who mattered. And sure, innocent bystanders could get caught in that, which is why I wasn’t gonna hang out with the guy in my free time or anything, but he’s not gonna turn on me!”

“He’s got all those control words,” Jeremy said uneasily. “What if somebody used one of those?”

“They wouldn’t waste it on nobody,” Lakeisha said. She’d read that info dump too, and it was terrifying to contemplate, but it had also belonged firmly in the category of _not her problem_ , until this latest horrifying development. “And he’s not gonna do it to himself!” 

“But the Collective is after him,” Jeremy said. “They were gonna catch up to him eventually anyway.”

“The Collective is mostly dumb assholes,” Lakeisha said. “They were no closer to catching him than SHIELD was. Until fucking Mike got involved. When I find out how he found me I am going to learn to be a violent person, I tell you what.”

“You sure Mike’s involved?” Jeremy asked. 

“Who else would recognize me?” she asked. “None of the rest of them knew my face anymore! None of the rest of them fucking stalked me for years, Jeremy, nobody but him cared who I was. There’s nobody who’d do this besides him, and it’s right up his alley to use the Winter Soldier as an excuse to doxx the fuck out of me.”

“What if it wasn’t Mike, though,” Jeremy said. 

Lakeisha tried to pick up her coffee cup but her hands were shaking, so she left it. Jeremy knew most of what the deal was with Mike, but he didn’t know all of it, and maybe he just didn’t get it. “If it wasn’t him,” she said, “then I have a new enemy I don’t know anything about, and that’s fucking worse.” It felt like an icicle shoved straight through her spine, and she stared at Jeremy in horror. “Fuck. What if it _wasn’t_ Mike. Fuck! I have to know.” She dashed back to her room, almost tripping over her feet, and dug her phone out of her bedside table with shaking hands. 

Of course she still knew Mike’s number, she kept strict tabs on the guy so she’d know if he ever found her again. It would take time to set up a relay so she could text him without giving away her own number, though. Of course there were like five texts and a missed call from James on her phone already. Good-- at least he knew. _We need to talk_ , she wrote, and appended her address. Then she put her phone down. 

“What if it wasn’t an enemy,” Jeremy was saying from the door, and she looked up at him, and it suddenly-- 

slowly-- but suddenly--

all--

came--

together.

_Shit._

“It was you,” she said, staring at him, and her heart maybe stopped for a horrible moment. 

“I didn’t say that,” Jeremy said, but it was a frantic backpedal, and pretty transparent. 

“You,” she said, and her vision went red. “You-- are you fucking _serious_ , you fucking _doxxed_ me? You fucking _doxxed_ me! Do you even _understand_ how the Internet _works_? Do you even understand how fucking _dangerous_ that is!”

“I blurred-- ow!-- your-- ow!-- face out-- ow!” Jeremy said, holding his hands up, and the claw was really hard, ow-- only then did Lakeisha realize she was hitting him. 

She stopped, and stepped back, and she felt like she was towering in her rage, her feet were really far away from her head. “I will kill you,” she said, very quietly. “I will-- _kill you_.”

She retrieved her phone and looked at it. “I’m trying to fucking look out for you,” Jeremy said, bristling in the doorway, but he was keeping his distance, because he knew her. “Since you won’t take care of yourself!”

She stared at him, and her whole body was gone, she was a pure beam of absolute stillness. “If I relied on anyone to take care of me,” she said, “I would already be dead, Jeremy. I take care of myself just fine.”

She looked back down at her phone. _On my way,_ James had written. 

“When it comes to pretty white boys,” Jeremy said, “your track record is less than stellar.”

Lakeisha stared at him, and it was really good she’d transcended her physical form or there would have been more hitting. “You would love for this to be about that, wouldn’t you?”

“Jesus, Keesh, I ain’t blind,” Jeremy said. 

“But you think I’m stupid,” she said. “You think I’m so stupid I would get involved in something like this for a stupid reason like that.” 

“It wouldn’t be the first time!” Jeremy said. 

“Oh my God,” Lakeisha said, “Jeremy, I was seventeen years old, Jesus Christ, and it wasn’t even _like_ that.”

“I’m just saying,” Jeremy said, “you don’t got a great track record.” 

“So there you go,” Lakeisha said quietly, sitting down on the edge of her bed. “I guess that makes sense. You think that somethin’ that was done to me when I was young, alone, and scared is my fault, just the same way you think everything that’s ever happened to this guy was his fault, and you’re gonna throw it in our faces every time we come up against another scary thing, and that’s just how it’s gonna be.” 

“Keesh,” Jeremy said, face twisting. 

“But what happened to you isn’t your fault,” Lakeisha finished viciously, standing back up. “And if you got trouble gettin’ over that, it ain’t your fault, and no matter how long it takes you gettin’ over it, it ain’t your fault, and whatever you might do to the people who love you while you’re all messed-up over it, well it ain’t your fault, and if it’s just too hard to move on past it, well it ain’t your fault, but fuck anyone else anything bad ever happened to because they should suck it up!” 

“Keesh!” Jeremy said, shocked. 

“We can’t all be Jesus, Jeremy,” Lakeisha said. “I guess only you can ever make an unbiased decision because nothing has ever happened to you that was your own fault, but everything else bad that ever happened to anyone else, they deserved it, they asked for it, they’ll ask for it again. That’s how this plays out when you take it to its logical conclusion.” She grabbed a change of clothes and shoved him backward out the door so she could close it, and got dressed. 

When she opened the door, he was still standing there, and she wanted to punch him in the face but she was just exhausted now. “That’s not fair,” he said. 

“Nothing is fucking fair,” she said, “and I took care of Mike, didn’t I? I got him out of my life, didn’t I? He’s never laid a finger on Jimmy, he doesn’t even know for sure if he was born a boy or a girl, he doesn’t know what happened to me, and as far as he knew, up until last night, I’d disappeared from the face of the earth. And now you put my fucking picture on the Internet in the most high-profile way possible. And now I’m in danger again. Congratulations, Jeremy, you’ve made my life back into the living hell it was five years ago, and you’ve dragged an international assassin into the middle of it.”

“I blurred out your face,” Jeremy said again, sounding a little helpless. 

“You could have fucking _asked me_ about _fucking anything_ ,” Lakeisha said. Her whole body kept going cold and then hot again, and she wished she could go back to the transcendental rage part because that had been tolerable at least. She walked back out to the kitchen and the buzzer went off just as her phone vibrated. She glanced down, and went and buzzed James in. He had to have already been in the neighborhood, which wasn’t surprising; of course he’d figured out where she lived within probably minutes of deciding to work with her. He’d probably set up a sniper’s roost across the street. Fuck, it didn’t bear considering.

“Who is that?” Jeremy asked, trailing after her warily. 

“Someone I can trust more than I trust you,” she said. “I can’t fucking believe you, Jeremy! I didn’t lie around waiting for you to come back from the desert, did I? I could’ve used your help then, sure, but I didn’t have it. I put on my big girl pants and fucking _dealt with it_. I wasn’t lying around waiting for you to save me from this either, but if you were gonna, I wish you’d done it in a way that didn’t fucking expose me to my stalker and his entire Internet full of cronies!”

“Keesh,” Jeremy said. 

“Shut the fuck up!” she said. “Shut the fuck up! This is your fault and fuck if I’m gonna let you make it any worse!”

She opened the apartment door, because she knew how long the elevator took. “No,” Jeremy said, starting forward in alarm, “don’t--” but James was already standing in the doorway. 

“Hey,” he said. He looked grim and as tired as she felt. He looked over at Jeremy, stepped through the door, and closed it behind himself. “Do we know who the leak was? I couldn’t turn anything up, I even had Natasha look too, and she’s gone in to get the Avengers on it, we gotta know who the leak was.”

“Oh,” Lakeisha said, “I know who the leak was.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “This is my brother Jeremy. Jeremy, James. James Barnes, I guess it is really.”

“You invited him to our house,” Jeremy said faintly. 

“I did,” Lakeisha said. “You don’t think he didn’t already know where it was? I hadn’t told him, but if he’s the Winter fucking Soldier he could fucking figure it out, Jeremy. Our only safety is ever, ever in being nobody, and you just took that from me, and now there’s nothing you can do anymore to keep me safe. I’ll never be fucking safe again.”

James smiled tightly. “I’d kind of hoped this conversation would go a little differently,” he said. 

Lakeisha looked at him. “You’re the Winter Soldier,” she said. “I figured. Show me your left hand.”

He slid the fingers of his right hand down through the neckline of his shirt to touch his left shoulder, and his left hand shimmered a little and suddenly was metal. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s how I had such a good costume.”

“Jesus,” Jeremy said. 

“Cool,” Lakeisha breathed, letting herself be impressed for just a second as he turned it over, palm-upward, fingers curling naturalistically. It was really-- it was beautiful in person, which she hadn’t really expected; really shiny, really intricate, brutally functional, but also really beautifully-made. 

James flexed the fingers, then let his hand fall to his side. “I never lied about it,” he said. He looked sad, eyes a little indirect. 

“So now what the fuck can we do?” Lakeisha asked. “I never told you this, but I used to run with the Collective, back in the day, and one of them, well-- he took a shine to me, and I was pretty young and bad at sticking up for myself, and then he stalked me for a while, so I’ve spent a lot of time since then getting really good at hiding on the Internet and keeping a low profile in real life.” 

“Well,” James said, “shit.” His gaze snapped to her face and she watched as he put it together. “Well, I could start by finding him.” And the look on his face left absolutely no doubt that he’d been somebody’s big brother too. And that was kind of overwhelming, thinking about that, and she hadn’t really taken a moment to process that this guy really, truly, honestly was the Winter goddamn Soldier, and beyond that, Bucky fucking Barnes, straight outta the history textbooks. And that was so much more tragic than she’d actually figured it would be that she just sort of stared at him for a moment. 

Jeremy put his hand on Lakeisha’s shoulder from behind, and she wound up to elbow him, but he snapped out a couple of really forceful words in a foreign language, and just as she figured out that he’d been reading that doc about control words, James’s eyes crossed, then rolled back in his head, and he tipped over onto the floor. 

“Jesus Christ,” Lakeisha said, and Jeremy pulled her backwards so she couldn’t catch James, who fell pretty heavily and sprawled there. “Fuck! Fuck, Jeremy, what did you do!”

“It worked,” Jeremy said, sounding incredulous. 

She jerked her arm out of his grasp and punched him in the chest when he tried to grab her again, and got to her knees next to James’s prone form. He was sprawled on his face, and she could see that his nose was bleeding and his eyes weren’t quite closed. “Oh holy shit,” she said. Control words. She’d skimmed the document, released the previous day, that explained about them, and had read the analysis of how hard it’d be to get the pronunciation right, and fuck, she’d even _thought_ that Jeremy would be good at it, he had always been good at languages, but she’d never--

But some of those phrases could _kill_ James, and some of them would reset him to zero, and-- she turned and stared at Jeremy. “Which one did you use!” 

“Uh,” Jeremy said, and started to say the phrase again, and she shushed him frantically.

“Don’t say it again, tell me what it was supposed to do!” she said. 

“Uh,” Jeremy said. “Uh, ss-- uh, stop him, I think?”

“Be more sure,” Lakeisha spat, and dug her phone back out of her pocket and stared at it, and with her other hand, reluctantly touched James’s neck to take his pulse. 

She couldn’t find it.

“Uh,” Jeremy said. “I don’t remember!”

“If you killed him I will give you to the Black Widow,” Lakeisha hissed. “Fuck!” She tried to turn James onto his back and couldn’t move him. He was really fucking heavy, or magneted to the floor or something. “Fuck.” She stared at her phone. Who could she even call? She didn’t have Nat’s number. Of course Nat was the Black Widow, that hadn’t even been hard to figure out; it had been the first thing she’d been able to confirm. The pretty sometimes-foreign movie-star girlfriend was _absolutely_ the woman whose entire past was now strewn across the Internet, photos and dossiers and all.

“Fuck!” Who the fuck could she even call? Fuck.

“He’s,” Jeremy said.

“Get down here and find his fucking pulse,” she said, “fuck, I don’t know how that shit works.”

Jeremy knelt beside her. “I didn’t mean to kill him,” he said, shocked, but he slid two fingers under James’s jaw like he knew what he was doing. “Fuck!”

“Did you fucking kill him?” Lakeisha demanded, and she was definitely panicking now. 

“I, shit,” Jeremy said, “if he was gonna have a pulse it’d be right here.”

“Fuck,” Lakeisha said, “fuck, fuck fuck, fuck.”

 

________

 

 

“It’s a damn good thing you’re here,” Steve said with no preamble as Sam shuffled into the kitchen to get coffee. “Natasha sent me just a string of exclamation points and this link and I don’t even know what any of this means.”

“Well good morning to you too,” Sam said mildly, wandering over to look over Steve’s shoulder. 

“I don’t even understand what this is,” Steve said. It was some kind of message board, and something about the Winter Soldier, but it was mostly a news story about hackers.

“I’m no hacker,” Sam said. “You know we should probably ask the Vision.”

“Tony would know too,” Steve said, taut and upset. “But I sort of-- if this is the hunt closing in, y’know, I’m not really eager to involve Tony.”

“He’s surely already involved,” Sam said, pausing mid-thought as his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and frowned at it, because it wasn’t a number he recognized. Who had this number? Might be Natasha, it was local and he knew she was around. 

“Sorry,” he said to Steve, “hang on,” and picked up the phone. “Sam here, what’s up?”

“Uh, hey,” a voice said, soft and a little husky, “this is the one-armed guy you talked to at the VA last week?”

“Oh, hey,” Sam said, making himself not sound irritated. “I never got your name.” 

“So uh-- long story short but I got the Winter Soldier on my kitchen floor and I might have killed him,” the guy said. 

A woman’s voice said something indistinct, then sharper. “Uh, say again?” Sam said, seriously alarmed. 

“The Winter Soldier,” the guy said. And the woman’s voice said, shrill and clear and very close,, “Don’t you _even_ ,” and there was a clatter, and the call disconnected. 

“What the fuck,” Sam said, staring in distress at his phone. He had no way of tracing a call. He didn’t figure there was any quick way of doing it. He hadn’t pegged the guy for a crazy vigilante, just an overprotective brother, and he’d figured Barnes would know about that kind of thing and not be an idiot. 

“What?” Steve looked concerned. 

“Gave a guy my card,” Sam said, “he was asking questions about Bucky like he’d seen him, and I was like man, you don’t gotta worry, and he was sort of weirdly chill about it so I didn’t fuss much, and he calls just now, says he’s just had a run-in with him.” He wasn’t going beyond that. Not until he knew more. How could a one-armed un-augmented human have killed Barnes? It wasn’t possible. 

“Call got cut off?” Steve asked. 

“Yeah,” Sam said. “But like-- someone cut him off. A woman hung the phone up.”

“Something’s up,” Steve said. “Can we get a location or anything?”

“In the movies we could,” Sam said, “but I know it don’t really work like that, our military intel guys were always super pissed because they could crack radios and stuff but cellphones are super hard to do shit like that with.”

“I guess we have to call Tony,” Steve said, biting his lip.

“No,” Sam said, “Vision. This is more his thing.”

“Maybe call Natasha,” Steve said, pulling his own phone out. “She also would know where Bucky was, probably-- she could tell us if this is a false alarm, at least.”

But Steve’s phone rang as he was looking at it, and he frowned at the display, then his eyebrows went up and he picked it up. On speaker. Thank you. “Hey,” Steve said. “Didn’t think I’d hear from you again.”

“Oh my God,” a young woman’s voice said, “Cap, oh my God, it’s James, it’s-- James Barnes, I don’t know what to do.”

“What the fuck,” Sam said. 

“You got a brother,” Steve said, “who’s a veteran, yeah, and was just at a VA meeting like last week or so?”

“I, what,” the woman said. 

“He just called,” Steve said, “but he got cut off. Where are you and what happened to Bucky?”

“He called _you_?” The woman went shrill, then silent. “He killed him. He said one of those control words and it put Barnes down on the floor like a poleaxe. There’s blood coming out of his nose and we can’t find a pulse and we can’t do CPR because we can’t move him, he seriously weighs like four hundred pounds and we can’t even turn him over.”

Steve had gone an odd shade of white. “Give us your location,” Sam said. 

“Who are you?” she asked. 

“I’m the Falcon,” Sam said. 

She gave him an address with no hesitation, in Queens, and Sam said, “I’ll suit up and we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

 

“How do you have the Falcon’s number?” Lakeisha demanded, as she yanked the chair out from under the door handle of Jeremy’s room. “Get out here and help me.”

“He gave me his card at the VA meeting,” Jeremy said, looking mulish.

“Listen,” she said, “I don’t know how long a super soldier can go without a pulse but we gotta try CPR on this guy. You fucking killed him for no fucking reason.”

Jeremy set his jaw. “He was a dangerous assassin,” he said. 

There was a distinct, percussive thump from the kitchen, and they froze and stared at one another. “What,” Lakeisha whispered, “the fuck.”

“That didn’t sound like a door closing,” Jeremy said, and pushed her out of the way and crept down the hallway. She grabbed the back of his shirt and crept down the hall after him. 

They peered around the doorway into the kitchen, but Jeremy shoved backwards before she could see anything. “He moved,” Jeremy whispered furiously. “He moved. He moved. He moved.”

“How much?” Lakeisha’s fingers closed in Jeremy’s shirt and she wasn’t sure she could pry them out. 

“He’s sitting up,” Jeremy hissed. “We’re fucking dead.”

“You’re a fuckin’ idiot,” Lakeisha said in her normal voice, shoving the back of Jeremy’s head and pushing past him into the kitchen. James was sitting up with his back against the counter. There was blood all down his face from his nose, and she could see blood coming out of one of his ears. He was staring blearily at nothing and blinked like he was trying hard to focus. 

“You about gave me a fuckin’ heart attack,” Lakeisha said. 

James raised his head a little, wavering like he was really drunk, and tried to focus his eyes on her, but clearly failed. His mouth moved a little but he evidently couldn’t speak, either. She noticed with some horror that the white of one of his eyes had mostly gone red, as well. Like maybe a bunch of the blood vessels had burst. It was eerie. He looked awful. 

“Shit,” Jeremy said. 

“You fucked him up,” Lakeisha said. She knelt down to be at James’s level, but a few feet away so as not to crowd him, and said, “Hey. Hey, it’s me, it’s Lakeisha. Are you okay?”

James stared at her, his heart beating so hard she could see it in his throat. She shuffled forward a little bit, holding out her hand, and he recoiled with inhuman speed, shoving his back into the corner of the cabinets and producing a gun out of fucking nowhere and pointing it at her. 

“Oh shit,” she said, sitting back, hands up, and Jeremy made a noise but didn’t move, thankfully. “Oh, shit, buddy, I’m not tryin’ to touch you.”

“Dam--age -- suss--suss-tained,” James said, slurring terribly. His left arm was hanging like it was broken. His legs weren’t moving properly either. Had he had a stroke? Fuck, he’d had a stroke. “Auth-thor-rized rep-pairs nn-- nn-- needed.”

“Jeremy,” Lakeisha said, staring down the barrel of the gun, and she knew nothing about guns, and she didn’t know if this one was loaded but it probably was, and there had to be some kind of safety that Jeremy could probably tell if it was on or off but she wasn’t going to ask him. “Call the Falcon and warn him about this. No sudden moves, Jer.”

“No,” James said, swinging the gun up toward Jeremy instead. Somehow it was no less terrifying to see a gun pointed at her brother than herself. “No--”

“Please put the gun down, James,” Lakeisha said. “Please put it down.” And she was crying again. 

His eyes tracked slowly down from Jeremy to her, and she could see him trying to focus. His pupils were different sizes, one blown out huge and the other closer to normal. “Auth-- thor-- ity-- nn-- not recog-nn--ized,” he slurred.

“Steve Rogers is going to come bashing through that door,” Lakeisha said quietly, crying, “and you’re gonna shoot me and my brother in startled reflex, and when you come to you’re gonna be real sorry, James.” 

James blinked woozily at her, closing one eye-- the wide-pupiled one-- and squinting with the other. “Ssteve Rrroghrs,” he said. 

“Steve Rogers,” she repeated. 

There was a knock at the door and James did not turn his head or lower the gun. “You sure this is the right door?” a voice said. 

“I’m positive,” the other voice answered, and only then did Lakeisha put together that the first one was definitely Cap. 

“Sir,” Jeremy said, “I got to answer the door.”

James wavered visibly, and then lowered the gun, which was as good an answer as any. Jeremy went and opened the door. 

“Where is he,” Cap said. 

“He’s not dead,” Jeremy said. “He’s-- real confused though.”

Lakeisha was still sitting with her hands up, and she glanced over at them-- sure enough, Captain America, in civvies, and the Falcon, wearing a backpack? or the jetpack thing, oh, fuck, the neighbors were gonna be all over that gossip-- and she tore her eyes away and looked back over at James, who now had no sign of ever having had a gun, and had shoved himself back against the cabinets and was holding his dead left arm in his right hand, curled up into himself like he was expecting to get hit. He really looked like a dog that got kicked a lot. 

“Bucky,” Cap said. Lakeisha thought she might faint, holy _fuck_. 

James flinched, curled tight into himself and eyes squeezed shut. “Dam--mage ss-- ss,” he tried, quiet and low. 

“He has a gun somewhere,” Jeremy said. 

“Careful, Steve,” the Falcon said sharply. 

“Bucky,” Cap said again, getting down on his knees next to Lakeisha, “Bucky, look at me.”

“Not,” James said, “auth--th-or--ized.”

“I tried to touch him and he almost shot me,” Lakeisha said. “And he knows me, we hang out all the time.”

“As long as he’s not dead, I’m not really worried,” Cap said, and that was Captain America, close enough to her to touch her, my God, he was a human and he smelled like laundry detergent and he was wearing a hoodie over a t-shirt and the t-shirt was way too small, bless him. He was staring fixedly at James. “Bucky, look at me, who _is_ authorized?”

James had his eyes squeezed shut now. There didn’t seem to be any more blood coming out of his nose or ear, but it didn’t make him look any less awful. After a moment he opened his eyes, and blinked. Something was different. He was focusing better. He brought his gaze to bear on Cap, and the blown-wide pupil was closer in size to the other one now. “Steve?” he said tentatively, eyebrows pulling together. 

“Bucky? Are you okay?” Cap edged forward a little, hand flexing as he started to raise it but put it carefully back down. 

James looked around, and his gaze caught on Lakeisha and he looked alarmed. “Where am I?” he asked, eyes darting back over toward Cap. 

“My house,” Lakeisha said. “My idiot brother used a control word on you.”

James blinked, and let go of his left arm to bring his right hand up and wipe at his nose, frowning. He looked at it, saw the blood, and grimaced. “Fuck,” he said. Then his expression went wider, alarmed. “Did I hurt anyone?”

Lakeisha and Cap both shook their heads, and he looked from her over to Cap and then just stared at Cap. “Are you okay?” Cap asked. 

James swallowed hard, and wiped his face some more. “Yeah,” he said. “I think-- yeah.” He shook his head, but not in a negation, more like a dog coming out of water. He glanced up, and looked from Sam to Jeremy and back, then over at Cap again. “I, uh.” He wiped his nose again. “You must be Jeremy. I don’t remember meeting you.”

Jeremy looked around at the others in the room. “You’re taking him into custody, right?” 

“No,” the Falcon said. “I told you, man, he’s under control. We know where he is and he’s okay there.”

‘He’s a dangerous criminal!” Jeremy said. 

“No,” the Falcon said, covering his eyes with his hand, “he’s not. Jesus Christ.”

“Bucky,” Cap said quietly. “You sure you’re okay? She said you were dead, on the phone.”

“I probably was,” James said, looking exhausted. He let out a long sigh, tipping his head back against the cabinet, and held his arm out, and Cap scooted across the floor and settled next to him, and they put their arms around each other like little kids. 

“How many times’ve you died, Buck?” Cap asked, half-muffled in James’s hair. 

“A bunch,” James said. He sighed. “I know I promised I’d call, Steve. I talked to Sam about it.”

“I know it’s hard,” Cap said. “I know it’s not easy. I know-- I know what happened, Buck, I do.”

“How was he dead and now he isn’t?” Jeremy asked. “Also for real is he really actually Bucky?”

The Falcon looked tired. “That’s classified,” he said. “All of that is classified.”

The sound of keys in the door startled Lakeisha, and she sat up straight as the door opened. “Hi, Mama,” she said, as the door swung open and Brenda stood there, towing her grocery cart, Jimmy at her side, staring in confusion at all the men in her kitchen. 

“Well,” Brenda said. “Hi, everybody. I didn’t know we were expecting company.”

“It, ah, kind of happened spur of the moment,” Lakeisha said. She scrambled to her feet. “Uh…”

“Hi,” the Falcon said, holding out his hand. “I”m Sam Wilson, I met your son Jeremy at the VA last week.” 

Brenda shook his hand. “I”m Brenda Adams,” she said, and looked at the straps across his shoulders and chest, and said, “Are you _that_ Sam Wilson?”

“Ah,” Sam said, “yes, I am, I’m the Falcon.”

“I see,” Brenda said. “Well. My grandson is a big fan. Jimmy, come and meet Sam Wilson.”

Jimmy had gone wide-eyed and Lakeisha just wanted to hang onto him because she’d just had a gun pointed at her, but this was her life, so she stood still and wiped her eyes surreptitiously. 

Brenda turned to the two men sitting against her kitchen cabinets. “Oh,” she said, looking at James and clearly recognizing him. “You work with Lakeisha on those videos.”

“Hi,” James said. “I’m James. I-- forgive me if I don’t stand up, I’m not well.”

“What’s wrong?” Brenda asked. “Let me help.”

“I had a-- a seizure,” James said. “It happens, and it’s okay, but I can’t stand up yet. I just need a minute.”

Brenda gave him a measuring look. “Do you want a hot drink, or a cold drink?”

James blinked at her. The blood was already clearing up from the white of his eye, Lakeisha noted in some surprise. That sort of thing usually took forever to go away. “Actually,” he said, like it had never occurred to him before, “I’d love a cup of coffee or somethin’.”

“Of course,” Brenda said. She turned to Cap. “And you are?”

Cap scrambled to his feet. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Steve Rogers.” She shook his hand politely, and Lakeisha had yet another moment to think to herself that she was never ever going to be able to be as surreally poised as her mother. 

“I assume, given the company, you’re that Steve Rogers after all,” Brenda said. 

“I am,” he said. 

“Well then,” she said. “If I’d known you were coming I’d’ve made a cake or something.”

Steve laughed. “We kind of-- it wasn’t planned.”

“I’ll put another pot of coffee on,” Brenda said, as if this were no big deal. Lakeisha poked Jeremy in the ribs; he looked like he wasn’t sure if anything was real. 

“You did this,” she hissed at him, “don’t you check out on me.” She turned. “Jimmy, do you want to meet Captain America?”

Jimmy was at her side in an instant, like a magnet. “Is he really?” he whispered. 

“He is,” she said. “I know, I’m a little overwhelmed too.”

“Hi,” Cap said, and shook Jimmy’s hand solemnly. 

“Where’s your shield?” Jimmy whispered. 

“I didn’t bring it,” Cap said. “I was in a really big hurry. Your mom called and said James was here and wasn’t okay, and he and I are old friends and I was just so worried about him, I ran right out the door. It’s lucky I had shoes on.”

“I won’t ask,” Brenda said, “why my daughter had Captain America’s phone number.”

“It got spread around on the Internet,” Cap said, “and she did me a favor and helped discourage people from calling it.”

Brenda was pouring the last cup of the old pot of coffee into a mug. “Cream and sugar?” she asked James. 

“Yes, please,” he said. 

“This isn’t the freshest coffee,” she said, “but I thought I’d get you a cup to start with. There’ll be new in a moment, but this will warm you up in the meantime. Can we move you to a chair, or to the couch? I have it on some authority that the floor in here is not terribly comfortable.” And she held out her hand to help James up.

“Oh,” he said, “I’d like that, but let Steve help me up, I’m a lot heavier than I look,” and Lakeisha realized he hadn’t camoflaged his left hand again, and it was perfectly visibly metal and sitting in his lap. “I’m not-- a regular person.”

Cap came over and pulled him up, looking a little surprised at the effort. “You’re like a ton of bricks, Buck,” he said. 

“Thanks,” James said, swaying a little dizzily. Cap steadied him, and Lakeisha led them into the living room.

Jimmy had vanished, but she could hear him breathlessly asking the Falcon if he could really fly, and she heard the Falcon chuckle in response, so she figured that was all right. She went to put together a tray with the coffee service, feeling a little pleased for having impulse-purchased a matching sugar bowl and cream pitcher even if they only had milk to put in the pitcher. Having money she didn’t have to count twice and a grocery list she didn’t have to organize by priority and cut from the bottom was kind of a novelty, and she’d dealt well with it mostly, but not entirely. 

The tray was an old one that had been great-grandma’s, and it usually was decorative, but it lately had been used for tea parties with Jimmy, so it wasn’t dusty. 

“But if Captain America can’t fly,” Jimmy was saying intently, “then what is he good for?”

“Now Jimmy,” the Falcon said. “People who can’t fly are still good people, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“Is it true you can talk to birds?” Jimmy asked. 

Lakeisha made eye contact with the Falcon, a little _you okay with my kid bugging you_ kind of look, and he grinned, so she kept moving. Four, five cups since James already had one, the milk and sugar, six spoons, and she set the tray carefully on the coffee table, which thankfully was immaculate. 

James was sitting on the couch between her mother and Steve Rogers, who looked insanely _normal_ there. Jeremy was sitting on the love seat and she sat down next to him. “Give me my phone back,” he said. 

“Absolutely not,” Lakeisha said, and Brenda looked over at them keenly. “You caused all this trouble, I’m not about to trust you again.”

“I’m not mad,” James said. 

“How many people saw you and Mr. Falcon arrive here just now?” Lakeisha asked Cap, since he was closest to her. “How long do you think we have before that causes trouble?”

“What kind of trouble would that be?” Brenda asked, eyebrows raised. 

James took her hand, which had been resting on his arm, between both of his hands, and the left one was still visibly metal. “Ma’am,” he said, “I’m-- I was the Winter Soldier.”

“From the videos,” she said, “I know,” and then she hesitated. “Oh. You mean, _really_ , not just for a joke.”

“Yes,” James said. “Tony Stark has a bounty on my head, and HYDRA is hunting me, and it’s probably not safe for me to be here.”

“Oh jeez,” Steve said, grimacing, “oh, we’ve put all of you in danger!”

“ _Jeremy_ put all of us in danger,” Lakeisha said. “He’s the one who told a bunch of hackers on the Internet that I was working with James and James was the real deal. That’s why I stole his phone from him, Mama, I’m not bein’ a brat.”

Brenda put her other hand over James’s metal hand, and looked calmly into his face. “You know, son, I actually feel better about those videos now that I know it’s really you? I had sort of felt like it was poking fun of someone who didn’t need any more trouble in his life, but now that I know you were in on it I feel a lot better about what my daughter’s been doing.”

There was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” Jeremy said, shooting to his feet. 

“You’ll get shot,” Lakeisha said, horrified. 

“I been shot,” Jeremy said. But Sam was still in the kitchen with Jimmy, and she heard him say, “Who is it?”

“It’s Inez,” a familiar voice said, the girl from down the hall, “is Miz Brenda there?”

“Let her in,” Brenda said, letting go of James’s hands. Everyone stood up. 

Inez came into the kitchen, and stopped, staring at Sam. “I don’t know you,” she said slowly. “Wait-- oh! You’re that guy!”

“He’s the Falcon,” Jimmy said, gesturing widely with both arms. 

“Wow,” Inez said. She was a couple years older than Lakeisha, and she babysat Jimmy on Mondays. “I was just gonna come ask if you guys had seen anything-- Papa Marty on the top floor was yelling about a guy with a jetpack and we all thought he was crazy.”

“I was tryin’ to be stealthy,” Sam said. “We didn’t want to cause trouble, we just stopped in for a visit. I know Jeremy from the VA.”

“Oh wow,” Inez said, awed.

Lakeisha retrieved the coffee carafe, while she was up, and poured everyone cups of coffee, including one for Inez. “Anyone else see the jetpack?” she asked. 

“Not so far,” Inez said. Papa Marty was her actual grandfather, Lakeisha remembered. “Papa was so worked up we promised him we’d ask everybody, so Jose’s been doin’ the left half of the building and I been doin’ the right, and nobody but you has known anything.” 

“See,” Sam said, “I told you I was stealthy.”

“That’s just this building,” James said. He had both his hands wrapped around his coffee mug and he looked absolutely exhausted. “Stark made those wings, he knows where they go.”

“Wait,” Sam said, “you think Stark has a tracker on me?”

“I _know_ Stark has a tracker on you, Wilson,” James said. He pulled his phone out, and frowned on it. “Yeah, okay. That’s Natasha, telling me to get out of wherever I am.” He pushed to his feet, swaying unsteadily, and Cap shot up next to him, catching him. 

“Bucky,” Cap said, “I won’t let him take you.”

“The whole point is to avoid the issue,” James said. He turned to Brenda. “Thank you, so much, Mrs. Adams, for your hospitality. It was a pleasure to meet you and your family, I’ve heard a lot about you from Lakeisha. Steve, you and Sam stay here and distract Tony, it’s the only way I’ll make it out. Lakeisha, you got a window?”

“Oh holy shit,” Inez said, staring at him. “Are you really him?”

“Yeah,” James said, turning to look at her. 

“You take the stairs,” Inez said, “and I will get my grandfather in full fuss and he will insist on telling Tony Stark every thought he has ever had about jetpacks.”

“I’m coming with you,” Steve said to James. 

“No way,” James said. “No way, they saw you come here.”

“Come with me,” Lakeisha said. “Mama, Tony Stark has a bounty on James’s head because he wants to take him apart and see how the robot parts of him work, so if Jeremy turns him in I’ll never speak to him again even though he’s my only brother.”

“I understand,” Brenda said, and gave Jeremy a cool, assessing look. “I understand _everything_ , sweetheart.” 

Inez paused in the doorway, her phone already in her hand. “Keesh, take Jimmy with you, he’s too new at this to know what to say when.”

“Good thinking,” Lakeisha said, and held out her arms. “C’mon, baby, we’re goin’ for a walk!” He still had his shoes on, and came running to her, a little clingy because of how upset the adults all were. “C’mon, James.”

“Tell me more,” Brenda said, turning to Sam, “about how you know my son.” 

Inez said, into her phone, “Papa! Lo encontre! Ven abajo! Esta con la familia Adams!”

 

Lakeisha took James’s elbow with hers, and he pulled his cap low as they walked. “Take his other hand, Jimmy, I need to use my phone. Hang onto his hand so you don’t get lost.” 

“It’s the robot hand,” James said, grinning at Jimmy. “Want me to make it warmer or colder?”

“You can do that?” Jimmy asked, shyness gone as he grabbed on with both hands. 

“I sure can,” James said. He was walking a little more steadily. Lakeisha had been afraid he wouldn’t make it down the stairs, but he was improving rapidly. He looked normal, now, if you didn’t know him and didn’t know that his normal gait was usually much more fluid, much steadier and confident. But it could be the small child dangling from his now normal-looking arm that was making him walk with short steps. 

“Wwwwowwww!” Jimmy said, enchanted by something Lakeisha couldn’t see-- must be James messing with the temperature of the robot hand, and that was pretty far out to think about.

Lakeisha looked at her phone, and there was a text from a number she didn’t know. _This is Natasha, did you get him out okay?_

James slanted her a look. “Why you givin’ me that look?”

“How did Nat get my number?” He’d probably given it to her. 

“It is not impossible to keep secrets from her,” James said, “but it is also not easy. Whoop, hold on tight!” He lifted Jimmy one-handed over a puddle and Jimmy shrieked and laughed, hanging onto the hand that looked normal but was metal. “Hey-hey-hey, here we go!” He set Jimmy down, and Jimmy was shrieking with laughter and hanging onto him like he’d known him for years. 

“Can you fly too?” Jimmy asked. 

Lakeisha texted Nat back. _I don’t think anyone saw us leave_ , and she heard it then, heard the high whine of something science-fictiony flying overhead. James did not flinch, but his arm went tight under her hand. He didn’t look, but Lakeisha knew it’d be weird if she didn’t, so she craned her neck and saw gold-and-red, about human-sized, blur overhead, bank, and land on the roof of the building next to hers. And then there was a strange whining noise she could barely hear. 

“Scanner,” James muttered. “He’s scanning the buildings.”

“How long a range you figure?” Lakeisha asked. 

Jimmy twisted around at the end of James’s arm. “Is that Iron Man?” he asked, wide-eyed. 

“I don’t know,” Lakeisha said. She texted Nat, _Iron Man or one of his drones just landed on a roof, I hope we’re out of sensor range._

Her phone buzzed, but it was Cap. _Did u get out_ , no punctuation.

_yes_ , she wrote back. Now the only problem would be if any of the Collective was looking for her, but she hadn’t had time to disguise herself. Her only hope was that having Jimmy had put about thirty permanent pounds on her, distributed much differently from how she used to be shaped, and she didn’t dress like she used to, did her hair differently. It shouldn’t be enough, but Natasha Romanoff did more with less when it came to disguises. 

“Subway,” James said, looking at the entrance across the street. “Tunnel.”

He was, she realized suddenly, terrified. His eyes were completely flat and blank, even though his mouth was still twisted in the ghost of the smile he’d worn for Jimmy, and he was still swinging his arm with Jimmy on the end of it, still hanging on to her precious baby for dear life. 

“You gonna be okay in a tunnel?” Lakeisha asked, thinking of the days when Jeremy’s eyes were blank like that. 

“Nope,” James said, “but I’m not gonna be okay anywhere, and I’m never gonna be okay again if Tony goddamn Stark catches me.” 

“You hold on to me,” Lakeisha said, “okay, and I’m not gonna let him have you, okay,” which was absurd, he was the Winter fucking Soldier and she was a black single teen mom with a GED who’d never really punched anybody in her life and who he’d held at gunpoint like twenty minutes previously. 

“Okay,” James said. 

“Are we scared of Iron Man?” Jimmy asked quietly, scurrying along beside James as they crossed the street. “Is he the bad guy?”

“He’s not the bad guy,” James said bleakly, glancing back. The high whine intensified; Iron Man had flown to the next roof, and was scanning-- their building, now. People on the sidewalk were stopping, looking up. “He’s a good guy, Jimmy, he really is, but he’s pretty sure he’s the only person who’s ever right about things, and that’s just not true.”

They went down the steps into the tunnel, and James had his arm pressed so tightly against his body with Lakeisha’s arm trapped there that she knew if it had been his robot arm he’d’ve crushed her fingers by now. She could see, though, that his other hand was wrapped with Jimmy’s, perfectly gentle, hanging on just tightly enough. 

“Oh,” she said, looking up at his face. “Your nose.”

He didn’t have a hand free. He didn’t let go of hers. She stuck her phone back into her pocket and pulled out a tissue, because she was a mom and always had tissues.

It was strangely intimate, to wipe blood away from his nose, and she watched his terrified blank gaze try to focus on her, but instead slide through her. “Sit down,” she said, pushing him to a bench, there were benches along the walls down here, and he sank down carefully. Jimmy climbed up on his other side, and then climbed right into his lap, like he knew him. 

“How did your nose get hurt?” Jimmy asked. 

“Sometimes people just get nosebleeds, baby,” Lakeisha said. 

James closed his eyes, and finally let go of Lakeisha’s arm. He put his arms around Jimmy instead, and sucked in a shuddery breath, then let it out slow. “Thanks,” he said, not opening his eyes. 

“I’m sorry my brother hurt you,” Lakeisha said. “I’m angry he didn’t trust me. He’s the leak. It’s all his fault.”

James opened his eyes. The pupils were both the same size now, but she could see that he had a headache, the way his eyes pinched. “Oh,” he said, “I’m not mad. I spent last night yelling at Natasha to try to get her to read the whole list to me.”

“Why?” Lakeisha asked, shocked. 

James smiled. “They only work once,” he said. “The one he used? Can never hurt me again.” 

“Really,” she said. 

“Really,” he answered. 

“Why not read ‘em yourself?” she asked. 

His mouth twisted, wry. “Can’t,” he said. “I’m conditioned so I can’t read stuff about myself. Can’t even hear it. Some of it, I can get through, but I can’t read most of what’s in those info dumps. Makes my eyes go funny, and if I try to power through it gives me seizures, and I can’t--” He shrugged. “And the control phrases-- they’re audio, anyway. It’s the sound. Reading ‘em on paper wouldn’t work, and I can’t say ‘em. So I got no choice, I need to have somebody read them to me.”

“You can’t read anything about yourself?” she asked, shocked. 

He shook his head. “Not much. Unofficial stuff, summaries, that kind of thing I can manage. But the technical stuff, it’s all in this formal language, and the way it’s written, I’m conditioned against— I just can’t read it.”

“I could write you summaries,” Lakiesha said. “I’m like, the Internet’s current reigning expert on, well-- you.”

He blinked at her. Jimmy shifted in his lap. “I have trouble reading too,” Jimmy said sadly. 

“Maybe we could practice together, champ,” James said. 

“Yeah!” Jimmy said excitedly. 

“We’d need some other material to practice on besides my owner’s manual, though,” James said. 

“Owner’s manual,” Jimmy said, perturbed. 

“Well,” James said. “Machines have owner’s manuals, right?” He wiggled his normal-looking metal fingers, and there was a soft whirring noise.

“Are you all machine?” Jimmy asked. 

“No,” James said, “but more of me is than looks like.”

“I’ll write you an owner’s manual,” Lakeisha said. 

Nobody had ever looked at her like James was looking at her now, almost awed, luminous with emotion. “I’d like that,” he said. 

 

 

____________________________

 

 

 

“Mikey,” Natasha said. She was crouched on the headboard of the bed. It hadn’t taken her real long to dig the guy up. It was awesome that he was a late sleeper. This kind of thing was much less entertaining to do to a wary, awake victim.

He snorted, and batted at her, and she used the peacock feather she’d pulled off his wall to poke his nose again. He wasn’t wary enough to have done this, she thought, but she’d uncovered enough about him to know two things: number one, it was plausible he was too stupid to be wary enough to get away with what he might have done, and two, that she didn’t really care. 

She didn’t have time to play with him too much, if her hunch was right and he hadn’t done this, but she wanted to. James could defend himself, with Vision’s invisible help. It wouldn’t appreciably slow the mission down if she took a moment to dally with this target and indulge herself. 

“Mikey,” she said again, and poked his cheek with the base end of the feather plume. He snorted again, blinked bleary eyes open, saw her, and shrieked. 

“Who the fuck,” he said, “what the fuck, fuckin’, fuck!”

“Oh, Mikey,” she said, as he flailed ineffectually out of the bed and tripped over the dirty clothes on his floor and went sprawling. “Oh, Mikey,” she said, and cracked her knuckles. ”I have some questions for you, Mikey.”

“How the fuck did you get in here?” he blustered, the usual sort of thing. 

“That’s the least of your worries,” Natasha said. “What you should maybe start to worry about is how I found out that here was the place to get into, yes?” She grinned, dark and feral. “I have some questions for you about a young woman named Lakeisha Adams, and what you know about her.”

Mikey stared at her. “She’s lying,” he said. “She’s-- she’s lying, I never did anything she didn’t want me to!”

“I haven’t asked her anything yet,” Natasha said, cocking her head to one side. “She never mentioned you, Mikey. I got the impression she doesn’t devote a lot of thought to you anymore. But I did wonder why she’d worked so hard to erase her online presence.”

“I never,” Mikey said, eyes darting wildly, “who are you, why are you in my bedroom?”

Natasha settled herself on his desk, sweeping his keyboard out of the way so she could sit with her legs crossed. “I’m the Black Widow, Mikey. What you should be asking yourself is what you could possibly know that I’d care about.” She investigated her fingernails; the polish was chipped, a little, on her middle finger from jimmying the window lock. Tsk. Maybe James would repaint it for her. 

“I don’t know anything,” Mikey said. 

“Think harder,” Natasha said. “I’ll wait.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I put a lot of snippets up on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/bomberqueen17/), and I do plan on organizing things onto AO3 eventually, but if you get bored waiting for updates, I write a lot of weird shit over there. I'd love to link to my fic tag but I'm fucking terrible at consistent tags, and my browser extensions actually handle them poorly anyway, so uh. Sorry. Anyway. Say hi, I got chat over there and I don't always answer but I do love to get asks and stuff. Oh my god I am so high on cold medicine right now, I hate this, I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense and I am half-expecting sometime next week to come back to this and realize this entire chapter update is in raw HTML or is the script from the Bee Movie or something. But I just want to get shit done, so here goes nothing.


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